THE RELIGION OF 
EXPERIENCE 

HORACE J. BRIDGES 




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SOME OUTLINES OF 
THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 



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SOME OUTLINES OF 

THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

A BOOK FOR LAYMEN AND THE UNCHURCHED 



BY 
HORACE J.' BRIDGES 

AUTHOR OF "criticisms OF LIFE," ETC. 



N^m fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

All rights reserved 



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Copyright, igi6 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1916. 



4i^ 

SEP -7 1916 



©CI.A437590 



TO 

THE MEMORY 

OF 

DODO 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction ix 

Chapter. 

I. The Position and Outlook of the Churches i 

n. The Causes of the Relatr'e Inefficiency of the 

Churches i8 

III. The Re-interpretation of God 43 

rv. The Re-discovery of Jesus Christ 75 

V. The Resurrection of Socrates 123 

VL. Inspiration: Its Nature and Conditions 160 

VII. Immortality: A Study in Plato 188 

VIII. Religion and Nationality 217 

Conclusion: The Hope of Spiritual Unification 261 

Index 267 



INTRODUCTION 

The period through which we are passing has been 
characterized with great accuracy and feHcity by Mr. 
Walter Lippmann as one of simultaneous drift and mas- 
tery: mastery of detail, combined with drift in the 
matter of the paramount interests of life and its direction 
as a whole. In no way is this state of things more clearly 
demonstrated than by the contrast between our great 
and constant advances in scientific knowledge and the 
control of the world's material resources, and the ever- 
increasing confusion, obscurity and uncertainty in the 
domain of morals and religion. We know more about the 
trees than our forebears, and can handle them with 
unprecedented skill; but of the dimensions of the wood, 
and of the chances of finding a path through it, we do not 
know. Indeed, we are tempted to despair of the possibil- 
ity of knowing. Our impulse is towards agreeing with 
Auguste Comte in his assertion that metaphysical in- 
quiry is vain, and that we must deliberately limit our- 
selves to the field of the phenomenal, in which "positive" 
knowledge and ''positive" results are obtainable. 

And yet the soul of man refuses to acquiesce per- 
manently in such a proposal. We cannot remain satisfied 
with building a roof to our house and calling it the sky. 
Moreover, a little attention convinces us that we cannot 
attain to mastery in those departments of life where 
to-day we are adrift, unless we can discover some sover- 
eign principle whereby to co-ordinate our activities and 
to orient them towards goals which shall command our 



X INTRODUCTION 

spontaneous and rational loyalty. Such a principle is 
not to be found in the phenomenal world. The Positivist 
maxims of Love, Order and Progress, of devotion to 
Family, Country and Humanity, are not self-justifying to 
the post-Nietzschean age, if they ever were before; nor 
can they be vindicated without overstepping the limit 
which Comte arbitrarily prescribed to investigation. 
Agnosticism is, no doubt, a right and wise attitude in 
regard to many questions, but agnosticism as to the 
question of the worth of life, as to the essential difference 
between right and wrong, or as to the quaHties of char- 
acter which men should strive to develop in themselves, 
is a fatal disease, paralyzing to the will, and involving 
ultimately the suicide of the mind. Now the scientific 
attitude, with its equal and impartial interest in all facts, 
is bound to be agnostic on these issues, where the supreme 
interests of life demand clear and confident conviction. 
We need, then, something in the nature of a religious 
faith upon which we can all agree. Yet the bare state- 
ment of this as a desideratum is calculated to excite 
ironical laughter. What is easier than to point to the 
endless differences even among that minority which still 
adheres to the various organized forms of reHgion, or to 
remind us that a large majority has turned its back upon 
them all? To hope for a time when the existing Churches 
shall have composed their differences and arrived at 
unity of faith and poHty seems Utopian. In so far as 
various Churches are co-operating in philanthropic and 
social work, they are doing so only after carefully stip- 
ulating not to discuss the vital principles which inspire 
them. Moreover, even if we could anticipate that 
within the next twenty or thirty years the Protestant 
sects will attain to unity among themselves, what hope 



INTRODUCTION xi 

would this give us of bridging the gulf that divides 
Protestants from Catholics, and both from Jews and free 
thinkers? Yet what we need is a principle which shall 
bind together all the members of the nation, and, in 
time, all the nations of the earth. 

Our only hope seems to lie in discovering some fresh 
standpoint from which the doctrines and disciplines of all 
faiths may be seen in a new light and re-valued. This I 
have attempted to do by raising the question of the 
sociological function of religion. My first inquiry is not 
as to the truth of the creeds, but as to their reason for 
existence. What are those needs which have urged men 
into reHgious fellowships, and induced them to elaborate 
the various inadequate philosophies called theologies, 
and the numerous systems of worship, prayer and 
sacrament? Can these needs be isolated and studied 
apart from the attempts made to satisfy them? If so, 
may it not be possible to discover means of meeting them 
upon which there could be the same kind of practical 
agreement as there is in regard to the findings of physical 
science? 

In seeking to answer these questions, I have availed 
myself in this volume of the luminous and helpful method 
of the psychological students of religion. This is the 
method of distinguishing between experience and its 
theoretical interpretation. I have ventured to assume 
that the creeds and doctrines of all the Churches are 
attempts to precipitate into conceptual form certain 
experiences of the human spirit, certain demands which 
it makes upon the universe, and the response of the 
universe to those demands. Now since the creeds are 
unverifiable (because their propositions cannot be sub- 
jected to experimental investigation), it seemed necessary 



xii INTRODUCTION 

to turn direct to the experience out of which they grew. 
Moreover, it seems probable that the study of the dis- 
cipUnary practices of the Churches, — their sacramental 
and other devices for placing the individual in contact 
with the sources of spiritual strength, — will bring us 
directly into the presence of those needs in response to 
which organized religion has functioned. 

This book is thus an attempt to bring to light some of 
the verifiable factors in reHgion. Its suggestion is that 
the Churches should concentrate exclusively upon these. 
To those who are accustomed to find mental rest and 
satisfaction in the detailed creeds of the older Churches, 
such a suggestion may sound chilling and disenchanting 
in the extreme. It will not do, however, to make the 
wilfulness of a pampered appetite our guide when truth 
and the other sovereign interests of mankind are at 
stake. No doubt it might have been possible, in the days 
of the infancy of science, to construct a much grander and 
more fascinating view of the universe than was then 
verifiable, if wilfulness and imagination had been sub- 
stituted for the slow and plodding method of investiga- 
tion and experiment. Not only, however, would such 
an unreal world have been fruitless, but it would also 
have constituted a most effectual and permanent barrier 
to the attainment of that truth, transcending in grandeur 
all possible imaginary constructions, which the slower 
method has gradually won. 

Now, theologies elaborated in the days of alchemy and 
astrology, and by the same a priori methods as those 
employed by the alchemist and the astrologer, must 
needs bear to the undiscovered truth such a relation 
as alchemy and astrology bear to chemistry and astron- 
omy. And just as, in the process of converting those 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

romances into our sciences, the first step was to cast 
overboard all mere speculation and guesswork, and to 
concentrate upon the tiny fragments of assured truth, 
so to-day we must begin by denying ourselves the luxury 
of indulgence in that which is unverifiable. We now 
stand in religion where the fifteenth century stood in 
physical science. We are only at the stage of beginning 
to invent the new instruments and to devise the new 
methods of inquiry by which we may at last attain to as 
full a body of ascertained truth in religion as we have 
won in our knowledge of the physical world. 

It is because of an intense conviction that religion is 
sufi"ering through our failure to recognize the need of new 
methods and instruments, that I have in these pages 
given so large a place to the question of intellectual 
honesty, and of that kind of sincerity which consists in 
the rigorous separation of what is known from what is 
merely assumed. Hence my assertion of the claim of 
Socrates to rank beside Jesus Christ as a Saviour of the 
world, in the conviction that his method and secret are 
not only an integral part of any true religion, but a part 
which, under present circumstances, needs emphasis 
more than any other factor. 

This book, I am aware, can scarcely justify its title. 
The subject of the Religion of Experience is too vast for 
adequate treatment within the limits I have imposed 
upon myself. I am in the dilemma remarked by Seeley 
in the Preface to his Natural Religion: "An author has 
always to decide whether he will write short or long; 
and it is a choice of evils. If he writes long the public 
will decline to read him; if he writes short they will 
misunderstand him." My only possible justification is 
that this book, like several others of recent date, may 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

supply hints and suggestions which, if worked out by a 
multitude of other thinkers, will at last lead to the elab- 
oration of the new philosophy, psychology and sociology 
of rehgion. I am chiefly anxious that the book shall be 
recognized as an essay towards a basis of peace and co- 
operation. The day of the warfare between the provi- 
sional hypotheses of science and the speculations of 
theology (which was mistaken for a warfare between 
science and religion) is over. The time has come to seek 
peace upon the only possible worthy basis: that of the 
acceptance of principles recognized as vahd by both bel- 
ligerents, and the application of those principles to the 
task of achieving human salvation, by giving to the whole 
of life a spiritual interpretation and a spiritual orientation 
that will call forth a devotion at once rational and 
enthusiastic. 

My hope is that this volume may secure the attention 
of laymen of all denominations, and of those who are not 
members of any religious organization. To experts in 
theology and philosophy I fear I have little to offer 
that is profound enough to merit their consideration. 
The salvation of religion, however, must come, in my 
judgment, from the laity, and from those clergy who, by 
the multiplicity of their tasks, are prevented from becom- 
ing speciaHsts in its ultimate problems. Both the clergy 
and the unchurched laity may, indeed, be weary of the 
theme. I can but hope that there may be in these pages 
enough freshness of treatment and suggestion of points 
of view which have not hitherto been emphasized, to 
engage their interest. My desire is to set their minds 
working in fresh directions, rather than to convert them 
to agreement with my own views on points of detail. 

As my colleagues in the Chicago Ethical Society have 



INTRODUCTION XV 

generously undertaken the distribution of a number of 
copies of this book, it is due to them to state that these 
pages contain a frank expression of my own convictions, 
the censure of which must fall exclusively upon myself. 
The Ethical Movement is one in which the members 
are challenged to do their own thinking. The leaders 
are neither ex-pected to supply a body of dogmas to 
their congregations nor to submit their own minds to 
collective coercion. Hence the distribution of this work 
by my colleagues does not commit them to acceptance 
of the more debatable positions it sets forth. 

My obligations are too extensive for detailed specifica- 
tion. It is this fact, and not any deficiency of gratitude, 
which deters me from mentioning names here. I cannot, 
however, deny myself the pleasure of thanking my friend 
Mr. Arthur Little Hamilton for his constant help and 
encouragement, and in particular for his practical assist- 
ance in reading and criticizing this volume in manuscript 
and proof. 

H. J. B. 

Chicago, June, 1916. 



SOME OUTLINES OF 
THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 



SOME OUTLINES OF 

THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

CHAPTER I 

THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 

There is in many minds a conviction that the day of the 
Churches is drawing to a close. This is not merely an 
idea entertained by unsympathetic critics in whom the 
wish is father to the thought. It is the despairing belief 
of many who, by antecedents and even by ordination, are 
identified with the historical tradition and the spiritual 
mission of the Christian fellowships. Recent periodicals 
have been full of the question. Has the Church collapsed? 
and most of the answers, even by ministers or ex- 
ministers, have incHned towards the affirmative. In 
many of the Churches the leaders are no longer leading; 
they have lost the sense of their distinctive task and 
function. They are groping in a twiHght of intellectual 
and spiritual uncertainty. Their whole tone is "timid 
and apologetic," as of men who are uncomfortably 
doubtful whether they are rendering a service commen- 
surate with their emolument. 

This misgiving in some cases has taken a very positive 
shape. Papers have appeared affirming that the Chris- 
tian Church is in a state of complete apostasy from the 
spirit and teaching of its founders, and implying that 
sincere men should come out of her, lest they become 
partakers of her plagues. In this sense recently the 



2 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Rev. Elvet Lewis (formerly the coadjutor in London of 
Mr. R. J. Campbell) expressed himself in the Atlantic 
Monthly. He has abandoned his own pastorate, and 
apparently despairs of any kind of rehgious organization 
possible under existing circumstances. 

The Century Magazine for February, 191 5, contained a 
paper by Dr. Edwin Davies Schoonmaker, on the ques- 
tion "Has The Church Collapsed?" The burden of his 
plaint is that the Christian ecclesia has been false to its 
mission and purpose, from the very first day that its 
doctrine and organization began to crystalKze into 
definite shape in the minds of SS. Paul and Peter. Dr. 
Schoorunaker's indignation is awakened by the fact that 
the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral was resented 
by the world on aesthetic grounds alone. To his mind 
the majestic beauty of the medieval shrines is itself a 
thing to be deplored. The cathedral, he thinks, is not 
the home, but the tomb of the spirit of Christ. It ex- 
presses not the triumph of the Church, but the victory 
of the world over the Church. His argument impKes 
that Christianity ought always to have remained, what 
it was in the lifetime of Jesus, a direct spiritual influence 
of individuals upon individuals, without doctrine or 
organization, without hierarchy, and without pecuniary 
endowment. For him the apostasy began with SS. Paul 
and Peter, the former of whom — so it is impHed — turned 
the religion of love into a system of unprofitable dogma, 
while the latter transformed it into a temporal power, 
destined subsequently to enslave the minds and souls of 
men. 

One cannot but feel the earnestness of purpose which 
these criticisms express, and it would be wrong not to 
salute with respect the spirit of Dr. Schoonmaker and 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 3 

Mr. Lewis. But their reasoning proceeds upon pre- 
suppositions which are not congruous with the poor 
world of actual experience. Organization and intellectual 
formulation are, by the structure of our minds and the 
nature of our circumstances, inevitable concomitants, 
indispensable instruments of every spiritual movement. 
St. Paul's theology may be as false as you please; and it 
may be not wholly unjust to blame St. Peter for all the 
sins and shortcomings of the Roman hierarchy. Yet the 
patent fact is that, without their work and teaching, the 
very name of Jesus would have perished in the bogs and 
sands of oblivion, and to evil and to good been lost for 
ever. The anarchistic ideas of the critics, — their visions 
of a sweet and lovely spiritual influence, diffusing and 
perpetuating itself without any worldly organization or 
philosophical expression, — are dreams indeed: "dreams 
out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight." 
They owe to the organization and the theology which 
they condemn, the preservation of that very standard of 
Christian inwardness by reference to which they con- 
demn them. Without the theology and the missionary 
labours of St. Paul there never would have arisen those 
groups of people who demanded information about the 
life and work of their Lord; and consequently the Gospels 
would never have been written. Nor, without the de- 
velopment which led to the establishment of Christianity 
by Constantine, is it conceivable that the Christian fel- 
lowship could have survived the avalanche which de- 
stroyed the proud fabric of Roman civilization. How, 
then, can one condemn unreservedly an institution which, 
amid whatever tyranny and corruption, has preserved 
the standard by which its own shortcomings are to 
be judged, and has communicated to Mr. Lewis and 



4 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Dr. Schoonmaker that very impulse of unworldly ideal- 
ism which breathes in their writings? 

The Church, to be sure, is corrupt. There is no single 
branch of it, from the Roman to the Quaker, which is 
not obnoxious to this censure. But to say this is only 
to say that the Church is a human institution. If one 
is so obsessed with transcendentalism that one forgets 
what complications must needs ensue when the white 
radiance of eternity is refracted through the atmosphere 
of the time-world, one may say that the presence of 
even the slightest degree of corruption must condemn 
the Church beyond reprieve. But the man who keeps 
his feet upon the solid earth of the actual, even while he 
lifts his head among the stars of the ideal, will regard 
the presence of corruption as a reason not for condemna- 
tion, but only for reformation. 

It will not do to compare the actual historic Church 
with some perfect pattern laid up in the clear heavens 
of the ideal. The only fair comparison is between the 
Church and other human institutions, all of which in 
truth must finally be judged as sacramental vehicles of 
the ideal, media of inward and spiritual graces to man- 
kind. Has the Church been more corrupt relatively 
than the State, the family, and the school? Have popes 
and bishops, priests and deacons, been more traitorous to 
their trust than kings and statesmen? Has the Church 
done proportionately less good and more harm than so- 
called secular governments? Granted that among its 
evil it has done some good, could that good have been 
better done in its absence? 

Those who feel that Christianity has brought upon 
the world a degree of harm that preponderates over the 
good it has accomplished, must remember that the fair 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 5 

way of judging the Church is not to compare it with 
an ideal society that never could have been actualized 
on earth, or even with the best and most catholic religious 
fellowship conceivable to-day; but to compare it with 
any other religious organization possible at the time and 
under the circumstances in which it sprang into being. 
Christian doctrine, ritual, and ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion are, broadly speaking, a synthesis of the modernist 
Judaism of the first century with the paganism of that 
and later periods. The Christian element is tiny as 
compared with the entire mass. The question, however, 
is whether that element was a wholesome leaven, and 
whether it did beneficently leaven the lump. Suppose 
that, instead of Christianity, the predominant element 
in the synthesis had been Mithraism, or Manicha^ism, 
or Neo-Platonism of the type of Philo or Plotinus. Sup- 
pose any phase of the degenerate paganism pictured so 
vividly in the early books of St. Augustine's City of 
God had taken in the synthesis the place that was 
actually taken by the doctrine of Jesus and St. Paul: 
would the result have been better? Would the pagan 
hosts that overwhelmed the Empire have been more 
speedily initiated into the principles of civilization? 

Let the despairing critic of the Church place himself 
imaginatively in the second or the third or the fourth 
century. Let him obHterate from his consciousness the 
memory of all that has since transpired, and contemplate 
the possible alternatives that then were open to the 
minds of men. Seeing that only a tiny elite could receive 
the teaching of Seneca, or Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius, 
and that the world then was even less ready for the 
concretion of pure ethics into a cultus than it is now; 
seeing that truth must needs be embodied in some tale 



6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

if it is to enter in at lowly doors; and seeing that, even 
for the deepest minds (Plato's, for example), myth is an 
inevitable and indispensable vehicle for the communica- 
tion of that vision which cannot be conveyed by lan- 
guage: which of the available tales would he have chosen? 
Which of those revered figures wherein men saw, or 
dreamed they saw, some incarnation of the spirit of 
eternal truth and goodness would he have selected as 
the object of reverence and worship? Can any fair 
student of history doubt that the choice that was made 
was the best possible, — that the figure of Christ was the 
least inadequate S3rtnbol of the God in man that was 
available? 

If, now, it be admitted that the dominance of the 
Christian element in the religious amalgam which 
triumphant barbarism took over from Rome was benefi- 
cent, the next question is whether the good done to the 
Western world through the historic working-out of the 
Christian process was in any degree ascendant over the 
savageries and ignorances inevitably characteristic of a 
growth from barbarism into rudimentary civilization. 
We must keep vividly in mind the realism of the historic 
situation. That Goths and Huns, Teutons and Saxons, 
Franks and Vandals, should have been semi-barbarous, 
lustful, superstitious, ignorant, tyrannical, and dogmatic, 
was inevitable in the nature of things. That they should 
suddenly cease to be so through being baptized and called 
Christians, or ordained and called deacons, priests and 
bishops, is what nobody but a very superstitious person 
could for a moment expect. The only triumph of a 
refining influence that can reasonably be looked for 
is that they should occasionally have intermitted their 
savageries, — that once in a while there should be a 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 7 

Charlemagne, an Alcuin, a John the Scot, capable of 
better things. Our gratitude is due to the institution 
which made possible these rare stray gleams of light. 
Who can measure the contributions to civilization which 
have directly and indirectly ensued through Ulfilas' 
translation of the Bible into Gothic? If it be urged that 
he would have done more good by translating Plato, the 
answer is that Plato would have been as remote from the 
understanding of Ulfilas and his contemporaries in Gothic 
as in the original Greek. 

The theology of Tertullian and Augustine, it may be 
said, was barbarous. So be it. But be it remembered 
also that any ethical message which is to grip the con- 
sciousness and command the allegiance of barbarians 
must necessarily take to itself a barbaric integument, in 
order that it may come within their apperceptive range. 
That is why the Latin rather than the Greek Fathers 
became the dominant theologians of the West. The com- 
parative humanity and intellectual subtlety of Jerome 
and Origen placed them outside the mental horizon of 
the barbarized West, as completely as Emerson and 
Bergson are beyond the ken of the average patron of 
the baseball field and the moving-picture show. 

For those, then, who, like myself, lay claim to the 
noble style of free thinkers, I would sum up the argument 
thus: Do not maintain in one breath that the Church is a 
human institution, and in the next pass criticisms which 
imply that it ought to have been superhuman and super- 
natural. 

Another consideration which must impress itself upon 
anybody who remains aware of facts as they are, as 
well as of the ideal, is that the Church — using the term 
in its broadest sense — remains to-day the only possible 



8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

channel for the communication of ethical ideals and an 
ethical dynamic to the masses of Europe and of our own 
country. I do not forget the enormous debt which man- 
kind owes to the heretics, the innovators, and the free 
thinkers ; but is it not equally true that, in so far as their 
spirit has acted upon the masses, it has been the Churches 
which willy-nilly supplied the channel through which it 
was mediated? Is it not the commonplace of historians 
of free thought that the Churches have continually been 
changing, especially during the last hundred years, in 
the direction of humanity and rationality? If Emerson 
and Matthew Arnold, Strauss and Renan, Seeley and 
Darwin, and the rest of the liberators have at all in- 
fluenced the masses, has it not been chiefly at second- 
hand, through the teaching of preachers who have drunk 
directly of their spirit? 

It will not do to hug to our souls any optimistic illu- 
sions as to the power of self-education and self-direction 
possessed by the generality. We have, to be sure, our 
free libraries, and our many cheap editions of the master- 
works of human thought; yet the direct influence of these 
is at best small, and, even at that, is chiefly due to the 
personal advice of teachers and preachers. Does not 
every public teacher know that he can create a demand 
for a certain kind of books by his recommendation and 
advice? The fact is glaringly obvious that nothing but 
social organization and the direct influence of the living 
voice can avail to stem the flood of intellectual darkness 
and spiritual deficiency which still imperils all the nobler 
achievements of civilization. Yet, while the individual- 
istic illusion, which in the teeth of the facts maintains 
the contrary, is still prevalent, one must insist upon the 
truth, even at the cost of seeming platitudinous. We 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 9 

must not attempt, in the words of Milton, to '' sequester 
out of the world, into Atlantick and Utopian polities." 

We hold, then, these truths to be self-evident: first, 
that the Church (including under this designation all 
varieties of Christianity and Judaism) is not destined to 
disappear; secondly, that, if it were, this would be an un- 
mixedly bad thing for America and Europe, and not less 
so from the point of view of the free thinker than from 
that of the rigid authoritarian; thirdly, that if the 
Churches did not exist, it would be necessary to invent 
them; fourthly, that to-day there is no machinery ca- 
pable of replacing them or of doing the practical good 
which, in spite of all their limitations, they actually do 
accomplish; fifthly, that if the impossible did happen, 
and they were to disappear, the new organizations 
started by free-thinking humanists to replace them would 
either have to reproduce many of those features of the 
present Churches to which free thinkers commonly ob- 
ject, or else would necessarily fail of their purpose. 

The present volume is accordingly written in a spirit 
of genuine friendship to the Churches, by one who sin- 
cerely desires for them an increasing influence and suc- 
cess; by one who deplores their narrowness, their mis- 
takes and their present comparative inefficiency, only 
because he is convinced of the reality of the need which 
they are in part meeting, and which they could and ought 
to meet far more efTectually. 

Doubtless the direct influence of the Church on our 
modern populations is relatively less extensive than it 
was in former days. Here in America, according to the 
latest statistics I have seen, sixty per cent, of us have 
no Church connection whatever. Some of the Churches 
barely hold their own; others continue to grow, though 



lO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

slowly. Generally speaking, the rate of increase has de- 
cHned, relatively to the increase of population; in some 
cases almost to the vanishing-point. There is here ample 
warrant for discouragement. Yet those who feel that 
discouraging circumstances are less an occasion for 
apathy and despair than for an unprecedentedly vigorous 
tackling of the task, will do well to turn their attention 
to the other side of the shield. 

Upon doing so, we note that in the United States to- 
day there are forty millions of people who are connected 
with religious bodies, and are to some extent influenced 
in the conduct of their lives by such ethical standards 
as the Churches uphold. It may perhaps be counted un- 
fortunate that of these forty millions, no less than thir- 
teen millions must be assigned to the Roman Church, 
which in practice has been the least ethical and the 
most anti-intellectual of all the Christian bodies. To be 
sure, there is no necessary reason why this should con- 
tinue to be the case. The Roman Church, mthout any 
change in its hierarchical organization, could become as 
potent an influence for personal and public morality as 
any of its actual or possible rivals. Its great difflculty 
in America is that its priests are in general (by the ad- 
mission of some of their own body) an ignorant and in- 
ferior class of men. No Church suffering from such a 
handicap can rise to the level of its possibiHties. Those 
possibiHties, in the case of the Roman Church, are 
represented by St. Francis and Dante, by Pascal, by 
Thomas a Kempis, not to say by John Henry Newman 
and George Tyrrell. The first things needful for the 
Roman Church are an improvement in the average 
calibre of its officials, and a change of emphasis from 
the miraculous and magical to the ethical elements of 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES il 

its doctrine. It is by right no less the custodian of the 
humane, rationalistic and etliical spirit of Jesus, than 
any of the brood of rivals which historically derive 
from it. 

Consider further the fact that the "Protestant Episco- 
pal" Church in the United States now numbers over a 
million adherents. This, in view of the democratic 
and Puritan traditions of America, is a surprisingly 
large measure of success to have been achieved by the 
Anglican compromise, adapted as it was to the mon- 
archical and aristocratic conditions of sixteenth-century 
England. It has of course been won by an extension 
of the compromising spirit; or, rather, by a develop- 
ment in the direction of democracy and comprehensive- 
ness beyond anything that the Church of England has 
yet attained. There is far more liberty of prophesying 
in the "Protestant Episcopal" Church of America than 
in the English Establishment. The discovery of the 
amount of freedom of thought, speech and action that 
prevails among the clergy of the Episcopal Church in 
this country has been to me a most agreeable surprise. 
It is difficult to over-estimate the influence for good 
which such a body, inheriting the splendid intellectual, 
literary and aesthetic traditions of the English Church 
and utiKzing the liberty which it has here acquired, may 
exert upon the future development of the nation. 

Presbyterianism claims to be adding to its ranks 
thousands of new members every year. That denomina- 
tion has also not been immune to the influence of the 
Time-Spirit. In the last twenty-five years it has achieved 
the bursting of some bonds, and the loosening of others. 
No more than any other human institution has it been 
proof against the forces of mental and spiritual evolu- 



12 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

tion, as is testified by the attack upon its most "modern- 
ist" seminary in the General Assembly of 191 6. 

And so one might go through the entire list of the 
Christian denominations; but a detailed review of statis- 
tics is unnecessary to the present argument. One should 
not, however, overlook the fact that the large Jewish 
stratum of our population is undergoing a doctrinal 
transformation in the direction of catholicity, rationaHty 
and ethical quickening, exactly analogous to that which 
has so extensively modified the Christian bodies. In 
any large American city, the largest Jewish congregation 
is fairly certain to be the liberal one. Witness the posi- 
tions in the life of New York and Chicago held respec- 
tively by Dr. Stephen Wise and Dr. Emil Hirsch, in 
St. Louis by Rabbi Sale, and by their radical brethren 
in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. My own task is the 
leadership of the Chicago Ethical Society, one of five 
congregations composing the American Ethical Move- 
ment. This Movement, founded by a living Hebrew 
prophet, has gone further in the direction of clarifying 
and stressing the ethical element, as that for the sake 
of which the entire machinery of reHgion exists, than 
any of the other denominations I have mentioned. In 
the Ethical Movement there is a free mingling of persons 
of Gentile and of Jewish origin, with a supersession of 
that distinction. This is a triumph not achieved in any 
Christian Church (except perhaps in some few Unita- 
rian bodies) or in any Jewish congregation, however ad- 
vanced. 

The inclusion of liberal Judaism and the Ethical Move- 
ment, together with all Christian bodies, in the single 
category of the Church is wholly in accordance with 
the sociological and psychological truth of the situation, 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 13 

however strenuously some may object to the classifica- 
tion. We are in truth all one Church, in spite of our 
divisions, just as we are in fact all one nation, though 
we be divided into Republicans and Democrats, social- 
ists and individualists, syndicalists and anarchists. Nor 
can it be doubted that each of the divisions in rehgion 
has a justification for its existence, in the shape of a 
distinct contribution to the effort of human providence; 
just as, undoubtedly, each of the political groups strikes 
some note which is indispensable to the full symphony. 

Individual rehgious bodies are no more to be taken 
at their own interpretation than other social institutions. 
They have to be viewed in the Hght of history, and 
studied in terms of their psychological and sociological 
function. When so regarded, they are all seen to have 
a high significance and potential value, though the sig- 
nificance and the value may be very different from those 
that they claim for themselves. 

In estimating the influence that the churches are exer- 
cising upon contemporary Hf e, one has to look beyond the 
statistics of membership, and beyond the ratio of their 
numbers to the total population of the country. Even 
from this point of view, however, their influence must 
necessarily be enormous. Never before in the history 
of the West has there been a nation whose Church em- 
braced forty milHon human souls at one time; nor has 
there ever been an epoch in which religion in practice 
touched life at so many points as it does to-day. Gen- 
erally speaking, the rehgion of our age is far more of a 
force in conduct than that of any former Christian epoch 
has been. It cannot be claimed, indeed, that we are 
more reverent than our ancestors, or that we hold our 
convictions with anything like the burning intensity 



14 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

of the ancient martyrs or of the seventeenth-century 
Puritans. But we have enormously broadened that 
area of our Hfe within which we recognize the applica- 
bility of our religious convictions. What is called the 
social message of Christianity is new, not in the sense 
that there has been an extension of the ethical doctrine 
of the Church, but in the sense that there has been a 
fuller recognition of what is involved in duty towards 
one's neighbour. Have not the business men of our 
country, to their intense disquietude, lately rediscovered 
the Ten Commandments? Are they not undergoing 
the chastening experience of learning the larger meaning 
of the verb *'to steal''? The SociaKsts have rendered 
an invaluable service to religion, — not so much by their 
comparatively mechanical and pedantic doctrine of 
economic determinism, as by the spiritual implications, 
conscious and unconscious, of their propaganda. 

Evolution, then, in the direction of mental freedom, 
intellectual honesty, scientific method, and democratic 
control has been and is going on throughout the entire 
range of the organized Hfe of religion. The Church is 
still imperfect; — but so it will be on the morning of the 
day of judgment. So is the Republic; yet who for that 
reason wants to overthrow the Republic and establish 
a different system of government? 

The case for the Churches, in short, is that we cannot 
do without them, any more than the anarchist can do 
without one or other of the forms of poHtical society 
which he repudiates. The superior soul, who is so dis- 
satisfied with all attempts to organize the life of religion 
that he withdraws from every Church, acts as an anarch- 
ist would who should go off to the wilderness and estab- 
lish himself in airy and commodious lodgings in the 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 15 

branches of a tree. The political anarchist generally 
has too much of the saving grace of inconsistency to 
act logically upon his principles. The religious anarchist, 
on the other hand, commonly does try to square his 
practice with his theory. He cannot completely suc- 
ceed — it is inherently impossible that he should; but 
he does succeed in so far that both he and society suffer 
through his action. 

In the Movement to which I belong, and in other 
independent religious organizations, there are many who 
conceive their fellowships to be the predestined suc- 
cessors of the Christian and Jewish Churches. They 
are fully entitled to their opinion, since freedom of 
thought is the breath of Hfe in all such bodies; but this 
very principle entitles me to express my own convic- 
tion that such a development is improbable, because 
religious evolution does not proceed catastrophically. 
Take the Ethical Movement as an example. It has 
been in existence for just forty years; it numbers to- 
day in this country little more than 3000 members, 
divided into five Societies. At such a rate of progress, 
how soon could it be ready to assume the functions and 
responsibilities of the historic religious organizations? 

Such clean-cut breaches with the past as some modem 
free thinkers imagine are seen to be impossible in the 
light both of evolutionary doctrine and of universal 
experience. No new movement is ever wholly new. 
Christianity in essence is as old as Judaism, and in its 
developed substance it is a synthesis of elements from 
a hundred varieties of paganism, as well as from Judaism. 
It was, in fact, a movement of permeation of existing 
reHgious organizations, — as is well expressed in its own 
metaphor of the leaven and the lump. The reformers 



l6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

in modern movements misinterpret themselves and their 
mission when they talk of smashing the Churches, or 
expect the Churches to collapse and to be replaced by 
new societies. 

The smallness in numbers of these modern movements, 
however, ceases to be in any way relevant or important, 
when we define accurately the task which devolves upon 
them. Their function is that of influencing the historic 
organizations, by stressing the importance of neglected 
factors, and by demonstrating the possibility of com- 
bining the principle of progress with the principle of 
order in religion. The doctrines and the organization 
of all the Churches need extensive overhauling, re-inter- 
pretation, and reconstruction, to adapt them to the 
exigencies of our complex Kfe, and thereby to enable 
them to discharge adequately the indispensable task 
which constitutes their reason for existence. Experiment 
and innovation are as necessary here as in the Hfe of 
science and of industry. Now, just as in science a few 
men can make experiments, which if successful can be 
adopted by the scientific world at large, and which if 
failures can save the world at large from the waste of 
effort involved in repeating them; so, in the economy 
of the religious life, small groups of thinkers and re- 
formers can render an analogous service. This is the 
true justification for the existence of such bodies as the 
Societies for Ethical Culture. The nature of their task 
constrains them to give their main attention to the 
growing-points, so to speak, on the tree of the spiritual 
hfe. They cannot and need not erect a wholly new 
machinery adequate to the religious needs of mankind 
in general. A laboratory (if I may follow out the anal- 
ogy) cannot be a substitute for a whole university. The 



THE POSITION AND OUTLOOK OF THE CHURCHES 17 

Church must be so various and multiform as to make 
provision for the spiritual needs of the entire range of 
human characters and temperaments. It is enough 
for an innovating and reforming organization that it 
shall, as the result of its work, permeate with its special 
message the Hfe and work of the Church at large. For 
the Ethical Movement in America and in England one 
may fairly claim that it has not failed to contribute its 
quotum to this work. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CAUSES OF THE RELATIVE INEFFICIENCY OF THE 
CHURCHES 

Having thus briefly sketched the reasons for my belief 
that the Church is entrusted with a permanent and in- 
dispensable function of vital import to humanity, let 
me now enumerate the causes of the present compara- 
tive inefficiency of the Churches, and the definite points 
in which they need to reform themselves, in order that 
they may extend their influence to the whole of our 
population and multiply the concrete benefits which 
they produce in the Kves of their members, and through 
them in the common life. It is of course to be under- 
stood that the following accusations are true only in 
general. Doubtless on each point the reader will be 
able to think of exceptions. I would ask him to bear in 
mind that I am also conscious of these. 

I. The Churches have subordinated Hfe to creed, 
and, in so doing, have inverted the relation of the end 
and the means. They have forgotten that the entire 
machinery of doctrine and discipHne, creeds and sacra- 
ments, rituals and Hturgies, exists solely for the sake of 
purifying human character and rectifying human con- 
duct. The true principle to be followed in this matter 
is adumbrated in the celebrated saying ascribed to Jesus : 
*'The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 
sabbath; therefore man is lord also of the sabbath." ^ 

^ In quoting these words, I take the liberty of substituting for the 
ambiguous phrase "son of man" what authorities on the Aramaic dialect 

i8 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 19 

The mistake on this point lies at the root of most of 
the crimes and blunders which give such an unedifying 
aspect to a great part of Christian history. The Church 
must now resolutely lay hold upon the principle of 
Jesus, and apply it unsparingly to the re-statement 
and re-interpretation of doctrine and to the modification 
of practice. Religion will then cease to seem hostile to 
advancing knowledge. It will no longer repel the large 
numbers of conscientious thinkers who refuse to come 
into the Church, either as clergy or laymen, so long as it 
is controlled by the implicit principle that traditional 
doctrines and methods are more important than the 
Hfe to which they should be ancillary. The doctrine of 
Jesus is a radical humanistic one, and the Church should 
not hesitate to be as free and unconventional as its 
founder. 

2. Acting upon the principle criticized in the fore- 
going paragraphs, the Churches have to a large extent 
overlooked the legitimate claims of the human intellect. 
The whole of the so-called conflict between science and 
religion was due to this mistake. In their anxiety to 
stress the miraculous uniqueness of Jesus, they have ig- 
nored the indispensable contribution to human salva- 
tion represented, let us say, by Socrates. There is surely 
no impiety in suggesting that the method and secret of 
Socrates are as necessary to the rounded development 

declare to be its real meaning. I am not an Aramaic scholar; but any 
layman who follows closely the arguments of those who are (Professor 
Nathaniel Schmidt, for example, in his fine work entitled The Prophet 
of Nazareth), is bound to admit the cogency of their reasoning. The 
substitution, moreover, of "man" for "son of man" in this saying of 
Jesus, is the only means by which the logical force of his argument be- 
comes visible. If "son of man " does not mean man in general, his " there- 
fore" is hopelessly out of place. 



20 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

of human character as the method and secret of Jesus. 
One may admit, for the sake of avoiding argument, that 
Jesus is pre-eminently the Saviour of the world, in the 
sense that no other figure in history has appealed so 
universally to the progressive portion of humanity as 
he.^ Nor is it to be denied that the vital principle of 
freedom and completeness of thought, to which Socrates 
was a martyr, is impKcit, and even to some extent 
expHcit, in the teaching of Jesus. But so Httle is it ob- 
truded in the New Testament tradition that it became 
possible for the Church to forget, or at least to ignore, 
this element. It has historically been absolutely false 
to the spirit of the great saying, ''Why, even of your- 
selves, judge ye not what is right?" and to St. Paul's 
*' Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good." It 
has forgotten that the creed, for which it was so anxious 
to contend, cannot in strict accuracy be called the creed 
of one who has not subjected it to rigorous examination. 
The word beHef, as W. K. CHfford remarked, "is dese- 
crated when given to unproved and unquestioned state- 
ments." We can easily imagine with what distressed 
contempt Socrates would have regarded any would-be 
disciple who undertook to believe things simply because 
Socrates said them.^ Can there be any doubt in the 
mind of a close student of the Gospels that the attitude 
of Jesus in similar circumstances would have been the 

^ I omit the question of the claims of Buddha and Mohammed because 
the adequate presentation of my reasons for rejecting them would 
involve a long and unprofitable digression. 

2 "I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: 
agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, with- 
stand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself 
in my enthusiasm, and, like the bee, leave my sting in you before 1 
die." — Phaedo, § 91. 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 2i 

same? It is an unpardonable limitation of the philoso- 
phy of the Christian doctrine of incarnation to encircle 
Jesus with a fence that isolates his nature from that of 
all other saviours and reformers. What is the meaning 
of the teaching that the true Hght lightens every man 
who comes into the world, if not that others are to be 
placed on the same plane with the founder of Chris- 
tianity? I am not disputing the legitimacy of the pre- 
eminence ascribed to him. My contention is that, 
if first, he can only be primus inter pares. I contend 
further that the acceptance of this principle is in no 
wise inconsistent with his teaching, and that the Church 
can refuse to adopt it only at the cost of sacrificing an 
immense part of the good which it might otherwise 
achieve. 

3. The doctrine of the transcendence of God has been 
over-emphasized by the Churches, to such an extent that 
the true proportions of the mission of Christianity have 
been almost completely forgotten. What I mean in 
this connection will become apparent if the reader will 
contrast the theory of the City of God which was elab- 
orated by St. Augustine, with the idea of the Kingdom 
of God as we find it in the New Testament tradition. 

St. Augustine, and after him the Western Church 
generally, conceived of human society in the mass as 
irredeemable. This was one of the many mischievous 
effects produced upon that powerful thinker's mind by 
his early acceptance of the Manichaean heresy. He 
never shook off the notion of the inherent vileness of 
matter, and of everything associated with it. Among 
other consequences of this doctrine, it followed that 
humanity, being (to use inexact popular language) a 
fusion of the material and the spiritual, is totally de- 



22 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

praved, even on the spiritual side, by reason of this 
blending. Accordingly, for St. Augustine the City of 
God consists only of the angels, and of that small 
minority of human beings into whom, by the arbi- 
trary grace of God, a new spiritual principle is infused. 
The Christian doctrine (of which St. Augustine's is 
the antithesis) begins by affirming the immanence of God 
in humanity. Addressing himself to an indiscriminate 
muster of his contemporaries (who had received no 
sacraments, and who thus cannot be conceived of as 
regenerate in the Augustinian sense), Jesus begins his 
teaching with the fiat and unqualified assertion, ''The 
kingdom of God is within you.^'' There are, to be sure, 
inconsistencies in the New Testament tradition, but 
the dominant note of the early followers of Jesus is 
that the world in its totality is the subject of redemption, i 
Even the Judaizers among the apostles believed this. 
The squabble between them and St. Paul was not as to 
this fact, but as to the means of reaHzing it. In the 
fourth Gospel the entire presentation of the Christian 
message centres in the idea that Christ had come in 
order ''that the world, through him, might be saved." 
The first Epistle to Timothy may not be Pauline, and it 
may be as late as the most revolutionary critic chooses 
to affirm. The later it is, however, the more emphati- 
cally does it witness to the long persistence of the idea 
expressed in it, that God '' is the saviour of all men, 
specially of them that beheve." ^ The Church must 
return to this true primitive catholicity, and to the 

1 See the powerful and unfairly neglected treatise on The World as the 
Subject of Redemption, by the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Canon 
of Canterbury. (London: Rivingtons, 1885.) 

2ITim. iv, 10 (R. v.). 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 23 

true doctrine of immanence, which consists in recog- 
nizing as a manifestation of God every gleam of good 
that appears in the world. 

4. It was this same mistaken emphasis of the doctrine 
of divine transcendence which led to the interpretation 
of the sacraments in a magical instead of a social sense, 
with the result that they became converted into instru- 
ments of superstition as well as of salvation. Men have 
excommunicated and murdered one another for the sake 
of rival and unintelligible theories of the Eucharist, in- 
stead of realizing, through the interchange of mutual 
charity and helpfulness, the true significance of com- 
munion. Nobody can prove or disprove transubstantia- 
tion or consubstantiation. Nobody knows or can know 
whether the analysis of phenomena into substance and 
accidents is accurate, or whether, if it be so, the un- 
knowable, non-spatial and ultra-sensible substratum of 
one phenomenon is capable of being transmuted into 
the substance of another, without assuming the acci- 
dents of that other. Inquiry into such problems may 
be an exhilarating mental gymnastic, but both one's 
moral sense and one's sense of humour recoil from the 
thought of excommunicating people because they refuse 
to accept a particular dogmatic affirmation as to their 
solution. Even the use of bread and wine for the pur- 
pose of the sacrament, though it perpetuates a long his- 
toric tradition, is, in itself, supremely unimportant. 
Any other articles of food and drink would serve the 
same purpose equally well, since the essence of the 
sacrament is the pubhc commitment of those participat- 
ing to love and charity toward their neighbours, to the 
restitution of ill-gotten gains, and to righteousness of 
life. The communicant has the sense that in thus pledg- 



24 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

ing himself, he enters into the larger presence of the 
over-arching good, and is enabled to supplement from 
its inexhaustible resources his own feeble aspirations 
towards righteous life. 

A similar simple and natural explanation can be given 
of the sacrament of baptism. The advantage of em- 
phasizing this side of the matter is that the reality of the 
natural and social elements will not be denied, even by 
those who afhrm also the magical elements. Whatever 
else baptism may be, it is first and foremost the assump- 
tion of responsibility by the community for the nurture 
of a new creature in the principles of justice and right- 
eousness. The most extreme dogmatic theologians will 
admit that the production of this effect is the reason for 
the existence both of the sacraments and of the Church 
which ministers them. Yet how completely has this 
verifiable and most important side of the work of the 
Church been forgotten or neglected during the last 
fifteen hundred years! 

5. The next most urgent respect in which the Church 
must reform itself is by aboHshing the false finahty 
ascribed to the creeds. It is the theory of their absolute 
value, rather than their actual content, which has made 
them a barrier to the growth of knowledge, and conse- 
quently, in the modern world, a danger to intellectual 
honesty. If the creeds are studied from the point of view 
of their historic function, it becomes evident that they 
were formulated not to provoke divisions, but to put an 
end to them. Those who take the most rigorous and 
literal view as to their truth and importance, cannot 
deny that they are at best inadequate expressions of 
reahties which in their fullness transcend the limitations 
of human speech. Those, on the other hand, who take a 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 25 

latitiidinarian position with regard to doctrine, maintain 
that many of the positive statements in the creeds are 
baseless, and ineffectual as safeguards of the religious 
truths to which they were supposed to witness. For 
example, few men now suppose that in order to believe in 
the Incarnation it is necessary to beheve in the Virgin 
Birth, or that the doctrine of Christ's victory over death 
cannot be held apart from belief in the resurrection of 
his body. 

Nor is it certain that those who contend most ve- 
hemently for the old formulas, have fully fathomed the 
depths of their metaphysical subtlety. For example, 
most of the High Churchmen who to-day in England are 
contending for the retention of the Athanasian Creed, 
are wont to declare their belief in the personaHty of 
God, — that God is a person. They have failed to notice 
that the Athanasian Creed does not countenance this 
belief. God, according to that document, is the unity, 
the identity-in-difference, of three persons, but it is not 
stated that these three are one person. The Creed specifies 
with careful detail that, while each of the persons is in- 
comprehensible, yet there are not three incomprehensibles, 
but one; that while each is God, yet there are not three 
Gods, but one God. It does not state, however, that 
there are not three persons, but one person. According 
to the Athanasian Creed, to ascribe personality to God 
is as unphilosophical as it would be, let us say, to ascribe 
it to humanity. Humanity is the one essence of hun- 
dreds of millions of persons, but it is not itself a person, 
nor has it any of the attributes of individuals. It may be 
a little mortifying to the ultra-orthodox, who have so 
zealously contended for the doctrine of the Trinity, and 
for the one Creed which unequivocally affirms it, to find 



26 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

that that Creed when closely construed gives no support 
to the view of God which is commonly assumed to be 
orthodox. 

My contention is not that the efforts of hard thinking 
by which theologians, Hke other philosophers, have en- 
deavoured to define the nature of ultimate reahty, should 
be given up. One of the greatest sins and dangers of the 
present age is its mental indolence. I protest only against 
the ascription of finality to the metaphysics of the fourth 
and fifth centuries. The early Church, by summoning 
representative councils and concentrating co-operative 
intellectual effort upon the attempt to formulate the 
deepest truths cognizable by the mind of man, set an 
excellent example, which ought to be followed to-day. 
We have had to wait for Bergson and the Pragma tists to 
remind us that a vaHd philosophy cannot be the work of 
any single thinker. Co-operative efforts, renewed from 
age to age, will be necessary to deepen our insight into 
the nature of ultimate reahty; yet, even so, it would 
almost seem that this must for ever remain in its inmost 
essence incognizable. For this very reason, however, we 
should repudiate the suggestion that the thinking of the 
fifth century attained the utmost depth of the know- 
ledge of truth ''that the mortal glass wherein we con- 
template can show us." 

I plead, then, not so much for the rejection of the 
traditional creeds as for the right of every age to formu- 
late its own creed. The so-called Athanasian formula 
may well stand on record as a monument of the insight 
and of the intense mental labour of those by whom it was 
drawn up. But the policy of the Church should be to 
offer such documents only as a challenge to the minds 
of its members in successive ages. By so doing, it would 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 27 

not only make possible a virile development of thought 
and speculation, but it would also remove the handicap 
under which many of its most conscientious members and 
ministers are now labouring. 

To this catalogue of the shortcomings of the Church, I 
may be permitted to add two more points, which arise 
from the peculiar circumstances of our immediate situa- 
tion: 

1. The activity of the clergy in every good work. 

2. The lowering of the mental and moral caKbre of the 
ministry. 

I. In Mr. Arnold Bennett's amusing play entitled 
**What the Public Wants," a millionaire newspaper 
proprietor, who quite frankly is out to make money and 
cares nothing about the effect of his publications on the 
minds and morals of the public, gets into a high state of 
virtuous indignation at the suggestion that his journals 
ought to elevate the mind and taste of the public instead 
of depraving them. He is angry with his critics for sug- 
gesting that he ought to be (as he puts it) ''a sort of cross 
between General Booth, H. G. Wells, and the Hague 
Conference." 

Now, the chief dif&culty under which the minister of 
rehgion labours to-day, is that the American pubHc does 
seriously expect him to be a compound of Miss Jane 
Addams, Dr. Graham Taylor, Professor ZuebHn, and 
Billy Sunday; and the worst of it is that the minister 
usually acquiesces in this conception of his job. By 
honestly attempting to be all these various things to all 
men, he succeeds in being none of them, and incidentally 
sacrifices his equipment for his special and distinctive 



28 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

function. It is this state of things which constitutes the 
most imminent danger to the Church. Either the 
Church has a perfectly dignified and distinct task, which 
is not that of Mr. ZuebUn or Dr. Taylor or Miss Addams, 
or else it is a belated imposture which only cumbers the 
ground. 

The extent to which the clergy have lost sight of their 
special function, and of the means necessary to its dis- 
charge, is painfully illustrated on many sides. Take, for 
example, the recent book by Dr. Paul Moore Strayer 
on The Reconstruction of the Church. Dr. Strayer 
speaks for Presby terianism ; and, without any criticism 
of his personal qualifications, it may be said that if his 
own point of view and that which he gently criticizes are 
generally shared in that denomination, one need look no 
further for the cause of its relative failure. Many Presby- 
terians, like other church-members, are obsessed with 
the idea of *' efficiency. '^ They compare the Church with 
the factory, using the graceful and suggestive term 
''plant" to describe both institutions. As in the factory 
there is supposed to be a rigorous elimination of unpro- 
ductive machinery and effort, so these reformers want to 
have each item of church activity measured up, cata- 
logued, card-indexed, and all the rest of it, and to have 
everything cast out or changed which does not produce 
measurable returns. 

Incidentally one may remark that the accepted notion 
that business is efficient is an enormous illusion. Because 
individual units of production are organized with scien- 
tific precision, we jump to the conclusion (sedulously 
fostered by the friends of things as they are) that business 
generally is entitled to the same commendation. Now 
the only way to judge of industry is to take distribution 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 29 

together with production, and to consider both from the 
point of view of national economics and national well- 
being. So regarded, business in all the great industrial 
nations is still chaotic, wasteful, and in large measure 
inefficient. A river in which there is always an ample 
diet for the sharks would naturally be a paragon of 
efficiency from the sharks' point of view; but if one 
regards the river from the point of view of God, so to 
speak, it may appear to be quite otherwise. Such (be it 
gently whispered) is the state of things in regard to 
business. 

Under this characteristic obsession — for which, indeed, 
they are not to be blamed, since so few of us escape it — 
many people have come to think that a Church ought 
to be, at one and the same time, a soup-kitchen, a gym- 
nasium, a university extension centre, a social settlement, 
a labour bureau, and a headquarters of political reform 
activity; and, in virtue of being all these things, it may 
induce a few people to come on Sundays, as a sort of 
indulgence to the old-fashioned views of the parson, to 
hear a few apologetic remarks, sandwiched in between 
concert items, about God and the soul. This reminds one 
of the device resorted to by the Nonconformist bodies of 
England to attract the working class. They frankly 
despair of getting working-men to come to regular serv- 
ices, and so they have invented the nondescript per- 
formance entitled "sl pleasant Sunday afternoon" — the 
adjective being presumably intended to mark the broad 
distinction between the afternoon and the morning and 
evening events. At this performance there is singing, 
and sometimes a brass or stringed band, — to emphasize 
the pleasantness, — and a speech by an outsider (it would 
never do to put the parson up!) on eugenics, woman 



30 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

suffrage, trade unionism, Liberal or Labour politics — in 
fact, any mortal subject under heaven except religion; 
and at the end of the year the Church comes out with a 
flourish of statistics, rejoicing in the fashion in which 
it has attracted the ''lapsed masses." The favourite 
phrase in advertising these performances is ''brief, bright, 
brotherly." It is all very well, of course; but it is in fact a 
confession of the failure of the Church to do what it is 
there to do. 

The idea of the institutional Church and of the poly- 
math parson, when it is not taken for granted, is de- 
fended on the ground that the first apostles of Chris- 
tianit}^ made it a part of their task to provide for the 
needs of the poor, and that in its catacomb days (when 
its members were mainly of the slave class) the Church 
was a kind of combination labour union, sick-benefit 
society, and burial club. 

Yet what an unreflecting conservatism is that which 
would base the programme of the Church to-day upon 
the precedent of things done under stress of necessity 
by the Church of the first three centuries! This very 
defence overlooks the fact that the apostles, at the earhest 
possible moment, handed over their charity-organization 
and social-settlement work to others, expKcitly on the 
ground that "It is not reason that we should leave the 
word of God and serve tables." ^ These first promul- 
gators of the Christian evangel were conscious of a dis- 
tinctive task, for which they did not feel it necessary 
covertly to apologize, and which they would not sugar- 
coat by commending themselves to the public upon aU 
sorts of adventitious grounds. Paul and Peter would 
not have been willing to waste hours Hstening to some 
^ Acts vi, 2. 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 31 

applicant for work or charitable relief. They had other 
and more important business on hand. Yet to-day if a 
minister denies himself to such applicants, he is stig- 
matized as unchristian. It is his "job" to be at every- 
body's beck and call, at all hours of the day and night. 
You need not make an appointment with him. It is 
not as though he were a doctor or a law>^er or a dentist, 
or any other kind of a real man. He only has to preach 
on Sundays, and for the rest of the hundred and sixty- 
eight hours of the week he is everybody's obsequious 
factotum ! 

Now, although this intolerable state of things is largely 
acquiesced in by the ministers themselves, it neverthe- 
less spells the ruin of their work. The function of the 
clergy is that of teachers and edifiers. It is their duty 
to see that their congregations develop continually in 
mind and soul, that they learn more from year to year, 
that they grow more refined, more morally sensitive, 
more responsive to that spiritual challenge of reality as 
a whole, which is poetically described as the voice and 
the hand of God. Wherever this is not happening the 
Church is failing, even though it be raising millions of 
dollars for building and organization and for so-called 
institutional work.^ 

The reference to apostolic precedent, moreover, ig- 
nores the crucial fact that in the modern world the prin- 
ciple of division of labour and differentiation of function 

1 The way in which preachers are beginning to disparage their essential 
function is illustrated by the following words of Dr. Strayer, in the volume 
to which I have referred: "Pastors give their time to the preparation 
of sermons for people who have heard enough sermons to make them 
saints if they practised one in fifty." It apparently does not occur to 
him that the failure of the hearers to practise what is preached to them 
shows that there must be something wrong with the sermons. 



32 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

has led to the development of specific social organs, each 
entrusted with the expert handling of some one depart- 
ment of the manifold work which the institutional Church 
attempts to generalize. This principle of division of 
labour renders it manifestly impossible for any Church 
to be efficient in so many different activities at once. 
Moreover, in so far as it undertakes them, even though 
successfully, it is not a Church. 

Suppose, to take a perfectly accurate analogy, a school 
attempted to become an "omnium gatherum" of all 
sorts of philanthropies, social and political reform ac- 
tivities, and labour organizations, meantime apologizing 
to its pupils for introducing occasional sugar-coated 
references to reading, writing, arithmetic and the Kke. 
It could not but be a hopeless failure as a school, as well 
as in each of the other attempted activities. 

This analogy is the most exact that one could choose, 
because the Church is in fact a school, and must return 
to the conception of itself as such. It is a school, the 
purpose of which is not only to teach one special subject, 
but also to give instruction from a special point of view, 
and for a definite end, that shall cover all the manifold 
activities and interests of Hfe. It may be said that the 
education given in the ordinary school is not religious; 
to which I would briefly reply that it is not then educa- 
tion. Even technical instruction fails of its main value 
if it is not inspired by and directed towards ideal ends. 
Or if it be said that the religious work of the Church is 
not education, my answer is then that it is not reHgion. 
Rehgion is the focussing of enHghtened attention upon 
the sources of the supreme blessings of Hfe, to obtain 
them and to secure their permanence and increase. 
Education that does not truly direct the will to this end 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES ^^ 

is an imposture, and a Church that does not deepen and 
multiply men's powers of reacting to and increasing the 
sum-total of the good in the world is a failure. 

To put my case in the briefest and most challenging 
form possible, I would say that those things which the 
Churches to-day sugar-coat and apologize for, or bury 
under a mass of adventitious activities, are the only 
things with which they have any legitimate business; 
to wit, God, the soul, and salvation. 

The reader, I trust, will not do me the injustice of 
supposing that in thus seeking to single out the special 
function of the Church, I am casting the least discredit 
upon the legitimate sphere of the other activities with 
which it concerns itself to-day. Of course we want social 
settlements; but these can only be efficient when they 
are the exclusive concern of workers who have received 
a special and expert training in their conduct and man- 
agement. Certainly we cannot do without recreational 
centres for the young, especially in view of the abom- 
inable conditions of slum tenement life that we so cruelly 
and foolishly tolerate in our great cities. But here again 
is a function that cannot be discharged by casual and 
overworked amateurs. We need employment bureaus 
and labour unions, and we need — heaven knows we 
need — organizations for the elimination of political 
corruption and the cultivation of political intelligence. 
But the conduct of each of these is (or should be) the 
work of an expert specialist, who should devote to it 
the whole of his time and brains. The first condition of 
the "efficiency" we worship is the principle of one man 
one job. The parson, like the cobbler, must stick to 
his last. 

No lesson, moreover, is now clearer than the fact 



34 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

that these various reforming and philanthropic activities 
cannot be carried out on a sufficiently large scale except 
by the action of the community as a whole. Private- 
enterprise philanthropies are good and necessary because 
they serve to blaze the trail which the community may 
afterwards follow. They are investigation centres, to 
make known the facts and to plan the machinery for 
adequate relief. It is self-evident, for example, that 
the unemployment problem not only cannot be solved, 
but cannot even be understood, until we have a national 
system of labour exchanges established in every indus- 
trial centre of the country, with an efficiently elaborated 
machinery of co-operation. Such an organization is 
far too vast for any private body to attempt, and it 
must be armed with powers of inquiry and of action 
which could not be entrusted to any unofficial set of 
persons. Now, what is true in regard to unemployment 
is no less true in regard to the manifold provision for 
women and children, and for the unassimilated immi- 
grant, which the new social conscience demands. 

If, then, even specialized and scientific private organ- 
izations cannot deal adequately with our problems, how 
much more hopeless must be the attempt of the Church 
to deal with them in gross ! 

The difference between the Church and other schools 
is that the Church has constantly to keep in view Hfe 
as a whole, and to regard the building up of character 
and the generation of enthusiasm for righteousness as 
its direct and immediate end. Education should, in 
any case, be lifelong, and the Church is the only organi- 
zation which preserves even the tradition of this great 
truth. The Church may be defined as at once a school 
of the humanities for adults, and a store-house and 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 35 

distributing centre of character-building force both for 
adults and children. (I speak, of course, of what it 
ought to be: not of what it usually is.) It has here a 
function which will permanently tax the highest ener- 
gies of those devoted to its service. No man can be 
too good, and no man's time can be too long, for this 
supreme task. The clerg\Tnan ought to reserve at least 
four hours of every working day (that is, of every day) 
for reading and study, apart from the immediate work 
of preparing his discourses and his material for class 
teaching. If he does this conscientiously, he may, by 
the time he is forty, be really competent to grapple with 
the complex moral and spiritual needs of our age. In 
doing this work, he ought to be as jealous of his time, 
and of the claims of his task, as any banker or editor 
or doctor or lawyer. He ought to repudiate as essen- 
tially unreasonable the idea that he is to be constantly 
at the disposal of the out-of-work, or of idle members 
of his congregation seeking the luxury of private spirit- 
ual consultation and personally administered soothing 
syrup. To be sure, he needs contact with life as well 
as with books. But this he should seek at set times, and 
he should keep it rigorously under his own control. He 
must not suffer his studies to be rendered impossible 
through the unreasonable demands of those who have 
no respect for his time and his peculiar task. 

The Church, then, being, as I have said, a school of 
the humanities, and a centre of character-building force — 
this, and nothing else — is only indirectly concerned with 
activities which do not promote this end. Its business 
is to bring the sum-total of the good in the world 
(conveniently called God) to the reinforcement of the 
good tendencies and the overthrow of the bad ones in 



36 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

the individual, and to the purification of the common 
Hfe. 

Now to the attainment of these ends various means 
are necessary. Every means which does in any degree 
achieve them is to that extent justified by its results. 
All such instrumentalities are as natural, as legitimate, 
and as controllable as those by which schools are con- 
ducted or steamships run. 

The educational work of the Church must be done 
in part logically, by direct teaching, and in part psy- 
chologically, by indirect teaching through atmosphere 
and suggestion. All the arts should be pressed into 
service to this end, since all of them are indispensable 
to the full development of the mind and the rounded 
and harmonious balance of qualities that constitutes a 
rich and mellow soul. Architecture, music, painting, 
sculpture, ritual, sacraments, vestments, and all the 
rest of the Church's instrumentalities — including per- 
haps many things that it has never yet tried — are legiti- 
mate, if and in so far as they help towards mental de- 
velopment and spiritual edification; and all of them are 
necessary if it be found that the full stature and the 
perfect grace of character cannot be achieved without 
them. 

For certain types of human beings, any one or more 
of these means may be superfluous. But for mankind 
in the mass they are all necessary. Every form of re- 
ligious ritual, from the gray silence of Quakerism to 
the utmost elaboration of the Roman High Mass, is 
perfectly natural, and if it were directed to the ends 
that I have suggested, it would be perfectly legitimate. 
Human salvation is too large and complex an end to be 
attained by any single means. It is too vital to be en- 



INEFFrCIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 37 

dangered by the setting up of unverifiable dogmas as 
barriers between the individual and the natural devices 
by which he could be helped. 

The reason why artistic and ritualistic aids to re- 
ligious edification are by many good people thought 
dangerous is quite easy to see. It is because these things 
are enormously powerful, and because they have un- 
doubtedly been misinterpreted and misused. Any edu- 
cational device would incur the same condemnation 
if it were used to produce beliefs or conduct which merited 
disapproval. Suppose, for example, that history-teaching 
in our schools were used to make our children hate the 
Republic and the principle of democracy, and eager 
to work for the abolition of representative government 
and the establishment of absolute monarchy among us. 
It is palpable that the fault would lie not with the use, 
but with the abuse of history- teaching ; and the remedy 
would not be the excision of history from the curriculum. 
Such a remedy would be at least as bad as the disease. 

Exactly so is it in regard to the use of such devices as 
characterize the Roman Church, and other "ritualistic" 
bodies. There is nothing magical or miraculous in any 
of these devices. If they produce bad eJBfects upon mind 
and character (and in some cases they undoubtedly do), 
this is because they are misinterpreted and directed to 
wrong ends. Now the very fact that an educational 
device is powerful for evil when misdirected constitutes 
a strong presumption that it would be as powerful for 
good if rightly understood and used for a legitimate 
end. 

2. The other peculiarly modern reason for the relative 
inefficiency of the Church, to which I have alluded, is 



38 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

the fact that, owing to various causes, the ministry of 
all denominations is being recruited from men of inferior 
mental calibre and force of personality. Of course there 
are exceptions; equally of course, any clerical gentleman 
who reads this will distinctly understand that I place 
him in the class of exceptions. My statement is in 
general true, I believe, in all the Western nations, but 
pecuHarly so in our own country. We have only to 
glance back two or three generations to come upon a 
time when the very ablest men the country produced 
were attracted to the service of religion. The names 
of Phillips Brooks, of Beecher, of Parker, Channing, 
Emerson, and many others, will rush into every reader's 
memory. Certainly in Puritan New England not all 
the clergy were men of first-class ability; but the rule 
was that the preacher had a distinct vocation for his 
task, and was in general superior in education and in 
power of leadership to the majority of his congregation. 
To-day, unfortunately, this rule no longer holds. 

For such a state of affairs there are three main causes. 
First comes the fact that, whereas formerly the preacher 
had had greater educational opportunities than most of 
his congregation, to-day he has seldom had more and 
frequently less of such opportunities than they. Sec- 
ondly, the rewards offered to the preacher, in the shape 
not only of pecuniary emolument, but also of prestige 
and social estimation, are insignificant as compared with 
those offered by a moderately successful business career. 

Now the hypnotizing idolatry of wealth and extrava- 
gance infects us all to-day. None of us is entirely proof 
against the seduction of the course described in the 
cynical words, ''Get on, get honour, get honest." We 
have all to some extent imbibed the deadly ethical heresy 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHURCHES 39 

which is the corollary of materialistic economics, that 
honesty, and indeed all the other spiritual graces, are 
possible only as luxurious appendages to a wealthy 
life. Poverty is regarded as excluding the possibiHty of 
virtues and spiritual graces, and we actually tolerate 
and act upon the blasphemous assumption that a poor 
man cannot afford to be honest. 

It is this moral disease, engendered by and reacting 
upon the enormous prosperity which the rapid develop- 
ment of the country's resources has produced, which 
leads public opinion to look almost contemptuously 
upon the man who does not gravitate unresistingly to- 
wards the corner in hfe where the showers of gold will 
fall most richly upon him. In two recent novels — Mr. 
Tarkington's The Turmoil and Mr. Winston Churchill's 
A Far Country — we have over-true pictures of the way 
in which elect souls are dragged or seduced into the 
service of '^the Brute." Let us frankly face the fact 
that this thing is happening daily in a thousand pros- 
perous homes. The American nature is not at bottom 
Philistine and materiahstic ; it really has an enormous 
regard, even a superstitious reverence, for culture. But 
being, unfortunately, at the stage in which they know 
"the price of everything and the value of nothing," 
many people accept the delusion that culture is a thing 
that can be bought. It is assumed to consist in hav- 
ing the best-bound books in the handsomest book- 
cases, and the most expensive pictures on the most 
magnificent walls. Hence follows the belief that the 
ideal state of man is that in which he is able to give 
the highest price for the rarest object of art. We have 
not attained the stage of civihzation (reached twenty- 
four centuries ago in Greece) in which it is felt that great 



40 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

wealth is a disgrace, a thing to be kept secret if possible, 
or apologized for if it becomes publicly known. Ac- 
cordingly, among other disastrous consequences, it comes 
about that the ablest men — those who might by a Hfe of 
consecration produce the fine fruits of genius in art and 
literature — accept, instead of these high possibiHties, 
the lower certainties of business, and take upon them- 
selves the yoke of the machine. This is the chief cause 
for the relative inferiority of our present-day ministers 
of religion to their professional predecessors and their 
lay contemporaries. 

The third cause of this state of things is one already 
hinted at in my remarks about the creeds. Men of keen 
intellectual integrity are unwilling to use even liturgical 
language, so long as this is assumed to be the exact and 
scientific expression of their inmost personal convictions, 
when it is not so in fact. The Church must place a dif- 
ferent construction upon its creeds. It must either 
modify their language or make their use optional, and 
have it distinctly understood that they stand merely 
as historical monuments, and not as adequate expres- 
sions of the belief of men to-day. Otherwise they will 
remain what they are now, a stumbling-block in the 
path of the most desirable recruits to the service of the 
Church. 

Lest my criticism seem too severe, I would point out 
that the clerical profession does not stand alone in its 
present defects. It is suffering from the inevitable 
results of forces which have led to a similar deterioration 
in our political Hfe. The radical trouble in the latter 
department is that it has come to be regarded as a 
refuge for the relatively incompetent and for the more 
or less unscrupulous. This cannot be cured, any more 



INEFFTCTENCV OF THE CHURCHES 41 

than can the difficulty in regard to religion, without a 
fundamental change in our general point of view. We 
must return to the idea of noblesse oblige as a principle 
of action, and as a motive that should determine young 
men in their choice of a career. We must again learn 
to see the real values of Hfe as other than material, 
and inexpressible in terms of money. Only so shall we 
attract to the high and noble tasks of statesmanship and 
of spiritual leadership the finest types of character that 
our community can produce. 

To sum up: The Church has not collapsed. It is to 
be hoped that it will not collapse. But in order that it 
may achieve the full efficiency desirable for it in the 
interests of mankind at large, it must adopt the follow- 
ing radical principles of reform : — 

1. Re-interpretation of its function as educator, edifier 
and unifier of the nation. 

2. Whole-hearted acceptance of the principle of free- 
dom of thought for clergy and laity, and of the provi- 
sional and instrumental nature of doctrine. 

3. Recognition of the nation as the true Church, — 
i. e., as the real sphere of psychic life and character- 
building force, by which all individuals and groups within 
it are mainly influenced, and of local Churches as chan- 
nels by which the spiritual resources of the nation are 
mediated to the individual.^ 

4. New experiments, under scientific test conditions, 
must be conducted in the use of Hturgies, rituals, etc.; 
and anything in the traditional forms which does not 
make for mental and moral edification must be given up. 

5. All activities of an institutional or social order which 
are irrelevant to or incompatible with the Church's 

^ See below, chap. viii. 



42 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

special function, must be handed over to separate and 
specialized organizations. 

6. First-rate men must again be attracted to the 
ministry, by the raising of the standard of admission, 
the restoration of perfect self-respect to the clergy 
through the relaxation of dogmatic tests and formulas, 
and by assuring to the clergy an adequate and dignified 
maintenance and the opportunity of real leadership in 
their communities. 



CHAPTER III 

THE RE -INTERPRETATION OF GOD 

The foregoing chapters have perhaps sufficiently indi- 
cated what the title of this volume is intended to con- 
vey, — that the present inquiry is to be confined almost 
exclusively to the psychological and sociological aspects 
of religion. It is my conviction that practical agreement 
is less impossible as the outcome of an investigation of 
these sides of the subject, than upon the basis of theo- 
logical or metaphysical study. 

But, before proceeding to consider the idea of God as 
a force in human life, I wish if possible to make it un- 
mistakably clear that the limiting of attention to the 
immediately verifiable side of religion involves no denial 
of its transcendental aspects. Nor am I concerned to 
dispute that some of the transcendental doctrines con- 
cerning God may be necessarily implied in and deducible 
from actual events of experience. The Kmitation of the 
present inquiry, however, to facts of history and of 
personal and social Hfe, is justified both by the necessity 
of keeping this book within manageable limits, and 
also by the hope that on this side lies the best chance 
of finding common ground. 

Belief in God has been and is a tremendous motive 
force in conduct. It would, moreover, be paradoxical 
to maintain that there is no objective reahty corre- 
sponding to that belief, and that the millions who have 
been energized and guided in their conduct by the 

43 



44 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

power which they called God were victims of a mere 
illusion. They did unquestionably have their experi- 
ence, — an experience for which, as history shows, any 
number of explanatory theories may be framed. It 
may prove possible, by hmiting attention to the ex- 
perience itself, and prescinding from theological specula- 
tions, to arrive at a common understanding which shall 
be vahd and indisputable so far as it goes, though leav- 
ing open many questions as to the remoter impHcations 
of the facts investigated. 

I. Recent Developments. — The period which has 
elapsed since the Protestant Reformation has been 
marked by great activity in the field of rehgious thought. 
In the course of that development. Protestantism has 
gradually arrived at the solution of a fundamental in- 
consistency in the case which it presented to the world 
in the sixteenth century. One may say broadly that 
the reformed bodies originally set out with two mutually 
destructive principles, and that the subsequent course 
of events has been a struggle for supremacy between 
these. Protestantism appealed from the authority of 
Church and priest to that of the individual conscience. 
Unless the authority of direct personal experience could 
be vahdated, there was no basis for its rejection of the 
collective authority of the historic custodian of the 
faith. Yet, at the same time. Protestantism set up the 
final and infalKble authority of the letter of the Bible 
as constituting its own court of appeal from the doc- 
trinal and ethical corruptions of the Papacy. Just as 
the monastic orders had given a bHnd and superstitious 
deference to the received text of the Vulgate (against 
which Erasmus waged a memorable fight), so in the^ 
next century, — against the example and practice of 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 45 

Luther, and even of Calvin, — the Protestant societies 
developed a superstitious deference for the letter of their 
vernacular translations. In the case of the English, 
this became (what it remains in some instances to this 
day) a conviction of the direct divine inspiration, the 
finahty and infallibility of the King James Version 
of 1611. 

The idea of the infalHbiHty of any book, being by 
the nature of things incompatible with the supremacy of 
conscience, could not fail to lead to self-contradiction. 
The real controversy, then, of Protestant against Roman- 
ist was not as to reason versus authority, but as to 
the seat and nature of the ultimate authority in reli- 
gion. Both affirmed that there was a court of appeal 
external to and rightfully despotic over the reason and 
conscience of the individual. As against the despotism 
of the living Church, Protestantism in its degenerate 
form asserted the despotism of the letter of the Bible — 
as construed by the groups into which it organized itself. 
How speedily the new creed degenerated in this fashion 
can be seen by a study of the Ecclesiastical Polity, the 
classical treatise of Richard Hooker against the Puritans. 
Before the end of the sixteenth century, Hooker found it 
necessary to point out to them that, since scripture itself 
could not guarantee the authority of scripture, their posi- 
tion rested upon a circular argument which reduced it to 
absurdity. 

On the other hand, the Catholic position at bottom 
involves an appeal to individual private judgment no 
less vital than that made by Protestantism. The claim 
of a living historical and collective authority to un- 
conditional obedience cannot be so presented as to be 
self-evident. If a child born under Catholic influence 



46 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

remains loyal to the Church in his mature life only be- 
cause of the pressure of habit and the absence of thought, 
his allegiance is not a thing in which the heads of his 
Church can take any rational satisfaction. Or if the 
claim of the Catholic Church is presented to an outsider, 
he cannot become convinced of its validity without the 
exercise of a long and exceedingly compHcated process 
of private judgment. It was such a process, lasting from 
1833, or earlier, to 1845, which preceded and caused the 
submission of Newman to the Church of Rome. Hence 
it is somewhat of a misunderstanding to state the dif- 
ference between CathoHcism and Protestantism as 
consisting in the opposition between authority and 
private judgment. On the one hand, as we have seen. 
Protestantism afiS.rms an infallible authority; on the 
other, CathoHcism cannot escape from appealing to 
individual reason. Ultimately, therefore, both these 
systems of thought must rest upon the basis of personal 
spiritual experience. Except in so far as their claim 
can be justified by an analysis of such experience, it 
must fail. 

Although the present-day situation in reHgion, as it 
affects us here in America, offers vital problems to the 
Catholic as well as to the Protestant, yet the historic 
development which led up to it was chiefly a matter of 
the working out of the latent implications of Protestant- 
ism. The nineteenth century witnessed a reHgious ex- 
plosion; but the bomb which exploded had been set in 
the sixteenth, and it had taken three hundred years for 
the fuse to burn through. 

It became apparent in the nineteenth century that an 
infallible book constitutes a worse fetter upon the human 
mind than an infallible Hving voice. No set of men can 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 47 

remain altogether impervious to the currents of thought 
flowing around them. However slowly they move, move 
they must. The ''Still it moves" of Galileo applies to 
the Church as well as to the earth. Not only the doctrine 
and philosophy, but even the practical attitude of the 
Church towards many secular interests has changed re- 
peatedly in the course of history. But once the text of 
a book has been fixed, and infalHbility ascribed to it, the 
possibiHty of progress is virtually eliminated. Hence the 
stark opposition and acute friction between the move- 
ment of science in the nineteenth century and the old- 
fashioned theology. Hence, too, the fact that this op- 
position was overcome only by the unquaHfied surrender 
of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. 

But the so-called conflict between rehgion and science 
in the nineteenth century was only one of several lines 
of development which have converged in the religious 
situation that confronts us to-day. Let us for conven- 
ience enumerate four of these: (i) The advance of phys- 
ical knowledge, culminating in the evolutionistic hy- 
pothesis, had effects far beyond the mere destruction of 
the notion of Biblical infallibihty. (2) The latter illusion 
was also attacked, so to speak, from within, through the 
appKcation of the principles of hterary and historical 
criticism to the canon and text of the Bible itself. (3) 
Idealistic philosophy in the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries was anti-traditional, and tended more and 
more to be true to its inherent nature, which, from the 
days of Plato onwards, has involved the assertion of the 
supremacy of individual reason and conscience as the 
judge not only of men but of gods. Kant no less than 
Hume is a destroyer of that slavish attitude toward ex- 
ternal authority which all the old religious doctrines 



48 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

imply. (4) The advance of democracy has led neces- 
sarily to changes in fundamental religious thought, since 
a revolt against despotism in the State must sooner or 
later involve a revolt against despotism in the Church, 
and against the conception of God as an absolute 
monarch. 

I shall here treat only of three of the four lines of de- 
velopment above enumerated, omitting the question of 
Biblical criticism. 

It now seems almost incredible that there ever can 
have been any difficulty to rehgious minds in the opposi- 
tion between ascertained facts of physical science and 
the statements of the Bible. The notion of the infal- 
Hbility of any ancient book is so inherently unworkable, 
and seems to be such *' lives and Hves behind us," that 
we find it difficult to reahze the state of mind of those to 
whom it was a reality. It is no unfairness to the Hebrew 
scriptures to say that, from the point of view of science 
and philosophy, they are to an indefinite extent in- 
ferior not only to modern attainments, but to the attain- 
ments of other literatures contemporary with them. The 
works of Plato and Aristotle, while in some ways perhaps 
less inspired than the finest parts of the Old Testament, 
are throughout on a level of philosophic insight, logical 
power, and scientific grasp of reality incomparably higher 
than anything to be found either in the Old Testament 
or the New. Indeed, the only philosophical interpreta- 
tion of Christian doctrine in the New Testament — the 
Logos theory of the Fourth Gospel — is nothing but an 
adaptation of one of Plato's fruitful ideas. 

From the point of view of intellectual development, 
it has been a misfortune to the race that the superstition 
of infalHbility did not attach itself rather to the Dia- 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OE GOD 49 

logues of Plato than to the poetry, prophecy and folk- 
lore of the ancient Jews. Of the two evils this would 
certainly have been the less, had a choice been possible. 
The past, however, is irrevocable; and we can only look 
back with a wonder not unmingled with pity at the 
distress caused to our grandfathers by the hopelessness 
of their attempts to square the revelation of their own 
time with that of the ancient Hebrews. The whole 
confusion arose from the assumption that the writers 
of the Bible had special sources of knowledge inacces- 
sible to other human beings, and were supernaturally 
guarded against errors of fact. 

From the standpoint of to-day we can further see that 
the conflict of the nineteenth century involved another 
delusion, to the effect that evolution rules out creation. 
This delusion seems to have been shared by many of the 
propagandists of the doctrine of evolution, as it certainly 
is to this day by those who are seeking to popularize 
that doctrine among the masses as the foundation of a 
system of materialistic philosophy. The Darwin- Spencer 
hypothesis, as we may call it, was really presupposed in 
much of the reasoning of scientific men long before it 
was formulated. It is, indeed, an inevitable corollary 
of the principle of causality. That principle can only 
mean that the forces of change in nature are inherent, 
and consequently that the present state of the universe 
is explicable in terms of its former states. 

Now, those who fought the battle between science 
and theology felt that if this principle were sound, the 
notion of creation must necessarily be false. For many 
years few of the thinkers whose writings were sufficiently 
popular to enter into the general consciousness seem to 
have detected the fallacy of this antithesis. The most 



50 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

conspicuous exception that occurs to one's mind at the 
moment is John Morley, who, in his essay On Com- 
promise, in the early seventies, sounded a much-needed 
warning against the hypostatization of the word evolu- 
tion. It is unfortunate that he did not greatly expand 
his pregnant observation that ''Evolution is not a force, 
but a process; not a cause, but a law." To-day, after 
forty years, it is still necessary to insist upon this truth, 
which, when fully grasped, is sufficient of itself to an- 
nihilate the philosophy which the advocates of materi- 
aHstic and mechanical determinism are spreading among 
the masses. 

What do we mean when we say that evolution is a 
law? We mean that it is a description of observed 
uniformities of co-existence and sequence. It is a state- 
ment of the order in which things happen. It is a gen- 
eralization of fact. Any specific change which we ob- 
serve is due to some force or other; but the description 
of the process of change as evolution throws no Hght 
upon the nature of the forces causing change. Now 
the term ''creation" necessarily impKes a force. Crea- 
tion, if it happens, is a cause; evolution is not a cause. 
How, then, can there be any mutual exclusion here? 
How can we speak of the world-process as being one 
either of creation or of evolution? It is perfectly con- 
ceivable that the world may be both created and evolved, 
— that the process descriptively summed up as evolu- 
tion may be a process of creation. I do not affirm that 
it is so ; my point is merely that the opposite idea, which 
lay at the root of the conflict between science and theo- 
logical orthodoxy, is a fallacy, which a very small effort 
of careful thought suffices to dissipate. 

Another of those almost comical superstitions which 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 51 

seem always to spring up in the train of any attempt 
to popularize a philosophic or scientific doctrine, is the 
evolutionary illusion that all change is improvement. 
This idea still haunts many minds. An imaginary 
picture is drawn of the development from the amoeba 
up to man, and under that picture is inscribed the 
word Progress, with a capital "P." Mr. Bertrand Rus- 
sell, with delightfully acidulated humour, remarks that 
'^whether the amoeba would agree with this is not 
known." But, without consulting the amoeba, we may 
point out that the evolutionary superstition involves 
an optimistic fatalism, which is calculated to disarm 
the moral judgment and to paralyze the energies of man. 
It is bad enough to transform evolution from a process 
into a force, but it is far worse to turn the force into 
a good fairy, and then to affirm guilelessly that this 
good fairy, which has, by a process of uninterrupted 
advance, metamorphosed the ape into the archbishop, 
may be trusted to continue its beneficent activities until 
it transmutes the archbishop into the archangel. Prog- 
ress is a reality; but so is stagnation and so is retro- 
gression; and any belief that human aft'airs can be made 
better except through ideals and through unremitting 
determination to transform those ideals into actualities, 
is a superstition which must speedily bring its own neme- 
sis upon its heels. 

Perhaps the most noteworthy defect in the old- 
fashioned evolutionist argument was its failure to ac- 
count for variation. At this point it was highly vul- 
nerable to the attack of those who held the doctrine of 
teleology in any form whatever, — even in the form in 
which it was held by Samuel Butler. It is all very well to 
talk of the struggle for existence and the survival of the 



52 THE RELIGION OE EXPERIENCE 

fittest, but the cardinal problem is that of the origin 
of the fittest. Natural selection cannot begin to operate 
until the variations upon which it is to work have come 
into being. Before there can be a struggle for existence 
the struggler must exist; and it therefore seems not 
quite philosophical to describe him as a product of his 
own struggle. The half -conscious recognition of this 
weakness of the evolutionary position is betrayed by 
the use of such a phrase as "spontaneous variations." 
This phrase must either mean "variations which had no 
cause at all" (in which case it involves the abandonment 
of the very possibility of science, and indeed a suicide 
of thought), or else it must mean "variations the cause 
of which is unknown." But this is a singular admission 
to be made by a philosophy which is triumphantly 
announcing the expulsion of all mystery from the world 
of experience. 

There seemed only one way in which the difficulty 
could be got over, and that was by re-introducing, in 
modified form, those very ideas of creation and design 
which evolutionism was at first supposed to have ren- 
dered superfluous. Samuel Butler's theory amounts in 
effect to the substitution of a large number of designers, 
each with a limited intelligence and each indifferent to the 
plans of the others, for the one designer with unlimited 
resources which old-fashioned theology had postulated. 

In our own day, M. Bergson is making heroic efforts to 
estabnsh a theory which retains design but eliminates 
designers altogether. His elan vital, which explodes from 
nowhere and with no obvious cause, proceeds without any 
intelligence to carry out a work, every step of which, as 
Bergson traces it, would seem to require intelligence of 
the highest conceivable order. The curious thing about 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 53 

the Bergsonian clan is that 4ts handiwork continues to 
be perfectly intelligent, until it produces intelligence in 
man. Human reason is the only thing, apparently, which 
interferes with its rational working. Man's mind is a 
sort of will-o'-the-wisp, which leads us astray and opens 
between us and reahty a gulf impassable. It prisons us 
up amid inveterate errors. It raises pseudo-problems, 
due to the forcing of reahty into a conceptual framework 
which it cannot be made to fit without being denatured. 
It substitutes immobility for mobihty, and unreal 
mathematical time (which M. Bergson's Ithuriel-spear 
quickly proves to be only a transmogrified kind of space) 
for real duration. It consequently gives us a world 
considerably less Hke true reality than the moving 
shadows cast by the cinematograph are like the scenes 
and acts which they portray. If it were not for the 
intellect, we should be perfectly capable of understanding 
the perpetual creation of living forms. It is logic which 
makes this understanding impossible, because it is of the 
nature of logic to fetter us within the circle of the given. 
By a bewilderingly brilHant process of reasoning, M. 
Bergson demonstrates that reasoning is not to be trusted. 
We have to fall back upon intuition. When we do so, we 
get a vision of reaHty which first came to M. Bergson as a 
result of his intense analytical scrutiny and his very 
effective criticism of the older theories of evolution. 
It is the negation both of mechanism and of finalism. 
Being neither creation nor evolution, it is yet both at 
once. This reminds one of the extraordinary sound 
emitted on a memorable occasion by Mr. Weller the 
Elder, "which, being neither a groan nor a grunt nor a 
gasp nor a growl, seemed to partake in some degree of 
the character of all four." 



54 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

All of which is by no means intended for disparagement 
of M. Bergson and his most fascinating and valuable 
contribution to thought. When we reach the point 
where knowledge fails, we have frankly to choose among 
myths — or, as they are more poHtely called, h}potheses. 
This was done of old consciously by Plato, and uncon- 
sciously by the founders of all the religions. The myth 
of the elan vital is in many ways preferable to that of 
the world-machine, and to that of the "magnified and 
non-natural man" of the older theology. All that one 
need insist upon is that the framer of a myth shall recog- 
nize it for what it is. Let him say with Socrates, "I 
do not mean to afhrm that the description which I have 
given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true — 
a man of sense should hardly say that. But I do say 
that . . . something of the kind is true." What we need 
is freedom of thought and fullness of thought, and the up- 
rooting of the spirit of dogmatism. The old creationism, 
the later evolutionism, and the new Bergsonian blend, 
can dwell amicably together as speculations, and as 
partial expressions of the effort of mankind to grapple 
with a mystery which it cannot solve. There is design 
in the universe, and there is absence of design; there 
are progress and retrogression, creation and destruction. 
The essential achievement of Bergson is his demonstra- 
tion that each and all of these ideas are, in Bacon's phrase, 
inadequate to the subtlety of nature. 

2. Philosophical. — None of the great protagonists 
of the doctrine of evolution was a materialist. Whoever 
reads the writings of Spencer, of Huxley, of Darwin, or 
of Tyndall will see how much profounder is their teach- 
ing than the travesty of it which is to be found in the 
works of most of the popularizers. But, though the 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 55 

great protagonists of the idea were not materialists, yet 
it is the shallow and noisy appropriators of their doctrine 
who alone have won the popular ear; and the evolution- 
ism of the man in the street is a materiahstic fairy-tale. 
Now the phenomenon that it imports us here to notice 
is that the popular apologetic of religion entirely failed 
to meet it on this ground, because popular religion, too, 
has always been materiahstic. The Old Testament it- 
self, despite the ethical grandeur of many of its parts, 
falls under this condemnation. Its ideas of creation, 
of God and the angels, and of the spirit of man are quite 
primitive, and are of a piece with that child-like an- 
thropomorphism of the Greek populace, which is gently 
chidden in the Dialogues of Plato. It was necessarily 
difficult for those who regarded the Hebrew folk-lore as 
final truth to rise above the plane of materialism, upon 
which the so-called battle between science and rehgion 
w^as, for the most part, fought out. 

It is largely due to the prevalence of such confusions 
of thought as those above noted that the ultimate prob- 
lem at issue for religion is still almost universally for- 
mulated in terms of the question whether God exists. 
The true problem, as we shall see, relates to the nature 
of reahty as experienced, and should be approached by 
way of a discrimination between the category real- 
unreal and that of existent-non-existent. The real is not 
conterminous with the existent. It is a broader, a more 
inclusive category. There is no paradox in the assertion 
that that which does not exist may be more real than 
that which does. Accordingly, there is no absurdity in 
stating that even if God does not exist, he may neverthe- 
less be very real, and so it may not be necessary to invent 
him. Perchance, as Mr. Zangwill says, "we serve God 



56 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

better, deeming He is not." Be it observed that I am 
begging no questions here. I am not ''denying the 
existence of God." There is, however, this intellectual 
difficulty attaching to the popular idea of God's exist- 
ence : that it either reduces God to the level of the finite, 
making him simply a unit in the indefinite multiplicity 
of objects, contra-distinguished from each of them as 
they are from each other; or else it merges him with the 
totahty of existence in a pantheism which is practically 
indistinguishable from atheism. 

It may indeed be maintained that the word ''existence " 
is ambiguous, seeing that, as applied to spiritual reality, 
it means something quite different from what it signifies 
when applied to the phenomenal, the spatial, and the 
sensible. Since this is true, and in order to avoid the 
confusion between the two meanings of the term, it is 
better, when one is philosophizing, to use it only in the 
latter sense, as applying to that which falls within space 
and time. If the ideaHsts are right in saying that exist- 
ence means the possibility of being perceived, it must 
follow that that which perceives, but is itself imper- 
ceptible, cannot be reduced to the category of the exist- 
ent. If man is the creator of time and space, it involves 
a hysteron proteron to trammel him within the limits 
of his own creation. Here I am but repeating a truth 
that was obvious to the mind of Socrates, who chaffs 
Crito for asking "How shall I bury you?" immediately 
after Crito has admitted the validity of arguments tend- 
ing to show that Socrates was neither temporal nor 
spatial, and consequently could not be buried.^ 

We may express the argument in brief by saying that 
existence is strictly an intellectual category, to which 

^ Phaedo, § 115. 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 57 

the subject is irreducible. Reality then becomes the 
volitional category, upon which the existent is condi- 
tional and dependent. It is true that even a bare exist- 
ential judgment involves the subject together with the 
object in a synthetic unity, but the affirmation of reality 
connotes a committal of the will, which an existential 
judgment does not. 

An apology is perhaps necessary for the introduction 
of these considerations into a treatise which is frankly 
intended for popular consumption, and does not pretend 
to merit or appeal for the attention of specialists in 
metaphysics or theology. I could not justify my subse- 
quent arguments to the philosophic reader without offer- 
ing a glimpse at the groundwork of my thought. While 
the lay mind is unprepared to grasp a presentation of 
the difference between the real and the existent, it 
has grasped the truth that to state the question of 
God in terms of existence annihilates in advance the 
possibiHty of solving it. Whether there is within time 
and space an instrumentahty through which functions 
the individualized self-consciousness of some vastly mag- 
nified man, who fabricated the world of things and 
of organisms, is a question which no foreseeable exten- 
sion of our knowledge could enable us to determine. 
We may say, however, that if God is in this sense a 
person, wholly other than you and I, but functioning 
•through instruments in some sense analogous to your 
body and mine, he cannot then be either infinite or 
omnipotent. 

But the study of this aspect of popular thought sets 
us upon the trail of the psychological basis of religion. 
The philosophy of Christianity presents us with a very 
different God from that to which its popular teaching, 



58 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

its rituals and sacraments point. Whereas the orthodox 
metaphysic postulates an infinite, in whom the eternal 
discord between good and evil must necessarily be 
transcended and resolved, yet the practical working of 
Christianity points to a finite God — finite because per- 
sonal, and because identified, not with the totahty of 
existence, but exclusively with the good. The first of 
the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England de- 
fines God as "the Maker and Preserver of all things 
both visible and invisible." Such a power would neces- 
sarily be the originator and sustainer of evil, as well as 
of good. But such a power is not what anybody has 
ever practically meant by God. It is merely the Spi- 
nozistic natura naturans; and most people really agree 
with John Stuart Mill as to the ab urdity of applying 
ethical predicates to nature.^ 

It is, however, in the realm of the ritualistic and other 
practices of religion that we should look for its psycho- 
logical explanation; for these things precede the elabora- 
tion of systematic theologies. A distinguished meta- 
physician of our time has frankly said that "Metaphysics 
is the finding of bad reasons for what we beheve upon 
instinct." The saying is most true; and accordingly 
we must refer to the instinct if we wish to trace the 
genesis of the metaphysic. Now the instinctive expres- 
sion of religious faith takes the form of prayer to a man- 
like God, and of the practice of sacraments by which 
this man-Hke being can be, in a sense, coerced. The 
Christian metaphysic declares God to be omnipresent; 
yet the Eucharist, in the Cathohc view, is a means of 
forcing him to become present at a particular point in 

1 See the most luminous and closely-reasoned essay on Nature in 
Mill's posthumous volume entitled Three Essays on Religion. 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 59 

space, from which, in the very terms of the idea, he must 
otherwise and at other times be absent. This is but 
one of a hundred self-contradictions, the logical absurdity 
of which compels the conclusion that the practices are 
begotten of psychological needs, and that God is in- 
tended, as Professor Leuba says, not to be understood, 
but to be used. 

Let us then refrain from posing vain questions of fact, 
which from inevitable lack of data are inherently in- 
soluble, and let us see whether we may not arrive at 
more profitable results if we inquire into the nature of 
reahty as experienced. I may point out in passing (with- 
out stopping to elaborate its impHcations) the fact that 
such an inquiry involves a dynamic and voKtionaKstic phi- 
losophy as against a static and intellectuahstic one. For 
in essence the question ^' What is reality? " means, ''What 
satisfies the organic and constitutional will of man?" 

To reduce our problem to its very simplest terms, let 
us suppose the case of a child who is given a painted 
ball, got up to look like an apple, but made of paste- 
board and filled with dust and ashes. If the child bites 
it and then says, "This is not a real apple," what does 
he mean? He means that the phenomenon is not such 
as to satisfy the desires evoked by its appearance; and 
those desires are the expression of certain needs of his 
nature which through experience he has learned can be 
satisfied by apples. The reality of the genuine apple 
consists in the fact that it meets this need. The painted 
imitation exists as truly as the real apple. For the in- 
tellect, the one phenomenon has every whit as much in- 
terest as the other. But it is the will which rules, above 
the intellect, in the field of the real and the valuable. 

Now the rehgious craving of humanity is primarily a 



6o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

craving for that which is beyond all peradventure real. 
Man becomes conscious within himself of spiritual needs 
which are as insistent as the craving of the body for 
food and drink. The religious need is the need for per- 
fect righteousness, for inviolable justice, for utter purity 
in oneself and in others, and for such a system of rela- 
tions among all rational agents as shall actualize these 
qualities and thereby satisfy the demand of the soul. 
These needs are but partially met by the imperfect world 
of things and persons in which we Hve. They cannot be 
explained, any more than self-conscious rationahty can 
be explained, as an effect or product of the time-and- 
space process. It may be possible to account for the 
bodily cravings by reference to the make-up of the 
physical organism, — though at bottom it would be fully 
as rational to explain the organism as the result of the 
cravings; — but the demands of the spirit for ethical and 
rational satisfaction can never be accounted for by any 
such process of reduction to a physical basis. These 
demands transcend all the suggestions of experience; 
and the more experience disillusionizes us as to the pos- 
sibility of meeting them, the more does their definiteness 
and intensity increase. 

In Father George Tyrrell's posthumously published 
volume, entitled Christianity at the Cross Roads, he gives 
eloquent expression to this sad yet ennobHng sense of 
the insatiable demand made upon the world by the 
deeps of our nature. He declares that the very presence 
of these cravings in us proclaims our afhliation with a 
transcendental order of spiritual reaHty. He compares 
the spirit of man to the beaver in captivity. Like the 
beaver, man "builds his dams across the floor; he cannot 
tell why. Not till he is in his native river will he under- 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 6i 

stand his restless instinct; and the river is beyond all his 
present experience and imagination — a missing link in 
his mind." ^ These pathetic words are of more value 
as a revelation of the personal experience of Father 
Tyrrell than as a statement of religious or philosophical 
truth. They doubtless contain some truth, but cer- 
tainly more of pessimistic exaggeration. The truth in 
them is that we are conscious of needs which, being 
spiritual, can naturally be met only by spiritual means. 
The exaggeration is the suggestion that there can be no 
satisfaction for these needs so long as we are impHcated 
in the world of time and space. 

That world, however, is in its very nature a means of 
communication between spirit and spirit. Body is a 
vehicle, not an obstacle; a window, not an obscuring wall. 
Every man's ethical demand upon the universe is con- 
tinually being met by the response of other spirits akin 
to his own, functioning through those very instruments 
of sense which sometimes seem like barriers and obstacles. 
To say that man in this Hfe is in the position of a beaver, 
blindly obeying an instinct which is altogether incon- 
gruous with its environment, is to indict the world as 
an insane conspiracy against reason and conscience. 
Nor is there in this bitter pessimism any trace of that 
Christian philosophy which declares the phenomena of 
the sense-world (including the human body) to be neces- 
sary and pre-ordained channels for the communication 
of spiritual graces from soul to soul. What does Incar- 
nation mean, if not that these temporal and spatial 
thought-forms are indispensable media for any mani- 
festation of the di\ane? 

^Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-Roads, chap, xii, § a, pp. 125-26. 
(London: Longmans, 1913.) 



62 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

To this contention Father Tyrrell might conceivably 
have assented. But he would have proceeded to main- 
tain that man's craving for spiritual reahty and spiritual 
satisfaction is infinite, and consequently is inherently 
incapable of being satisfied under finite conditions. 
Such is the drift of his entire argument. Yet this is a 
confusion of thought, due to the partial survival in 
Tyrrell of the old dogmatic theology and scholastic 
philosophy. He has mistaken an infinite craving for a 
craving for the infinite; and he has further overlooked 
the difference between the satisfaction of such a craving 
and its extinction. 

To take a very homely illustration : a person suffering 
from thirst develops a longing for water that seems 
altogether boundless. This infinite craving, however, 
is not a craving for an infinite quantity of water. It 
will be allayed by an absurdly finite amount. To be 
sure, it will subsequently reawaken; but this is what the 
sufferer desires, since the permanent stilling of organic 
demands is the very definition of bodily death. To 
treat thirst as a craving for an infinite quantity of water 
would be to seek not its satisfaction but its extinction; 
and this could only mean death. 

Now, while all physical analogies to spiritual truths 
are necessarily inadequate, yet they are the only ones 
at our command. We must needs use them, while taking 
care not to be misled by them. To compare the needs 
of the soul to those of the body, as the psalmists were 
wont to do, is not absurd, even though the things com- 
pared are in truth incommensurable. The parallel holds 
at least in so far, that the seeming infinity of a craving is 
no index to the magnitude of that by which it may be 
allayed; and the partial and transient nature of the 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 63 

solace available is an indispensable condition of the 
subsequent revival of that yearning which is life and 
creation. Tyrrell's demand, not for the satisfaction 
but for the extinction of spiritual needs, implies for the 
soul a destiny more like the Nirvana of Buddhism than 
the Christian City of God. The consciousness of needs 
that can be slaked to-day only to reawaken to-morrow 
with more insistent demands is the very stuff, the very 
condition, of individuality. Life is growth, and growth 
is the transcending of limitations, the surmounting of 
obstacles, — only to be challenged anon by greater ob- 
stacles and more formidable limitations in its progress. 
We must not befool ourselves, through the old rationahs- 
tic language about infinity and transcendence, into long- 
ing for an inundation of the spirit by satisfactions out of 
measure, under which the very life of the soul would be 
submerged and lost. My need of God is a need for 
spiritual goods that can be met and is met by other 
spirits finitely conditioned as I am. It is a need for a 
relation of perfect mutuality, perfect equality, perfect 
reciprocity between me and them. It is the yearning for 
a qualitative perfection, rather than a quantitative one. 
The cup of cold water may indeed imply an unfailing 
fountain as its source; but it is the cup that I need, not 
the inexhaustible stream. I need to have my thirst 
slaked, but not to be drowned. I wish to thirst again, 
not to have that inward incentive to creative activity 
extinguished for ever. 

In admitting that the cup of water may imply the 
reservoir, we have perhaps approached as nearly as 
popular language and homely imagery can take us to 
the truth in Tyrrell's transcendentalism. We have to 
stand upon the ground of experience; but within experi- 



64 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

ence we find the implication of a reality transcending it. 
One need not dispute the reasoning that the rational 
and ethical nature of man, as manifested amid the 
limitations of the space-and-time sequences, testifies to 
a universal realm of mind and conscience as the drop of 
water implies the ocean. If I find within myself qualities 
not made by my environment, but making and mould- 
ing it; if in the very possibility of my knowledge and 
evaluation of the sense-world there is implied that which 
cannot be derived from the sense- world: then I must, 
by the principles of common logic, postulate a source 
analogous in nature to that in myself which is thus 
transcendent. Of such a source, no less can be said than 
that it cannot be inferior to its product. Consciousness- 
in-general is not entirely unknowable. In so far as we 
know ourselves we may know it. But to define it in 
terms of our limitations is a procedure in no wise war- 
ranted by logic. Yet this is what we do when we speak 
of "the personality of God," in the meaning usually 
given to that phrase. 

The inveterate anthropomorphism of religious thought 
is here displayed in its most conspicuous instance. Men 
insist in the same breath upon ascribing to God both 
personality and infinity; and they are unwilling to face 
the difficulty of disentangling these incompatible attri- 
butes. So far as experience goes, personality is con- 
stituted by its limitations. Finiteness is its very essence. 
I am I because I am not you. If the dam of otherness 
between us were broken through, the ensuing unification 
would involve the disappearance both of your person- 
ality and mine. Let us grant, to save dispute, that 
there must be a common source whence each of us draws 
the identical humanity which all share. It is incon- 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 65 

ceivable that such a source could contain within itself 
all those barriers of difference and otherness which make 
personality possible. There may be in the undifferen- 
tiated totahty of "mind-stuff" or " consciousness-in- 
general" something which, while unimaginable by us, 
is higher and greater than unitary personality. As 
Herbert Spencer remarked, the choice may be not be- 
tween personality and something lower, but between 
personahty and something higher.^ But, while allowing 
for this possibility, we cannot ascribe individualized 
self-consciousness to the infinite without intolerable self- 
contradiction. 

We are as men wandering in the dark subterranean pas- 
sages of a mine, each carrying a little lamp, upon which, 
for us, everything depends. To extinguish it is death. 
Accordingly, each chngs to his lamp with anxious in- 
tensity. Now, because we are always in the mine and 
have no conception of other conditions, we inevitably 
envisage all other possible spiritual life as similarly 
circumstanced. God, in our popular theology, is simply 
a bigger man groping in a vaster mine, and carrying a 
lamp which indeed throws its beams farther ahead, but 
is of the same type and construction as ours. That 
lamp is personality, individualized self-consciousness. 
May it not be that such personality on the plane of 
extra-spatial and super-temporal being would be as 
superfluous and irrelevant as the miner's lamp in the 
sunshine? 

Yet the clinging of the religious spirit to the notion of 
personality may find elsewhere its justification. To 
the miner the lamp is truly all-important; and to us the 
preservation of self-conscious individuality is the in- 

^ First Principles, Part I, chap, v, § 31, par. 3. 



66 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

dispensable condition of all spiritual achievement. The 
rehgious problem is a problem of the adjustment of 
relations among finite beings, whose separateness and 
difference are as marked and real as their identity. 
Our task is to superimpose an order of ethical relations 
upon the natural world of non-moral strifes and blind 
egotisms. Our perfection consists ideally in such an order 
as shall enable each to develop what is best in all, and 
thereby incidentally to bring out what is finest in him- 
self. A man is not true to himself unless he does his best; 
but what can that best be except that which produces 
the best quaHtative effect upon the character of others? 

I must, then, revere my neighbour not as a reproduc- 
tion of myself, but precisely in his uniqueness, in his 
otherness and difference from myself. I must not patron- 
ize him by treating him as though he were I. He is a 
unique and unprecedented synthesis of the universal ele- 
ments of conscious rationality and volition. He is an in- 
duplicable original, a medal of which the die is lost. The 
rehgious problem (which is also the social problem) is 
the estabHshment of an order of relations among all 
rational creatures which shall provide scope for the 
actualization of all the latent possibilities of good in 
each, with a view to that perfection which can consist 
only in their harmonization. 

The difference between this view and that of individ- 
ualism or anarchism consists in its recognition of the 
interconnection and interaction between all lives, and 
of the fact that individual perfection is the establish- 
ment of right relations between oneself and others. 
The sacredness of the individual, and of those Kmitations 
which constitute his individuaHty, consists in his power 
of entering into these relations. Because he and his 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 67 

contribution are unique, he is indispensable to the per- 
fection of the spiritual order, since perfection is by its 
very dehnition unrealizable unless it be complete. The 
absence of one star destroys the constellation. The 
moral ideal, which is God, is the integrated harmony of 
all the potentialities of good in every actual and pos- 
sible rational agent. Into this conception there enter, 
as indispensable elements, both the completeness of the 
series and the uniqueness of each of its terms; so that 
again we find ourselves face to face with the impossi- 
bihty of thinking of God as a single personality, but also 
with the impossibility of ehminating the concept of per- 
sonality from the idea of deity. 

The common conception of God regards him as an 
already realized perfection, and declares that man is 
made in his image. Such a view, however, renders man 
superfluous: there can be no addition to perfection. If it 
be already achieved in God, what need can there be for 
images, reproducing by piecemeal fragmentary glim- 
merings of the already perfect, under conditions involving 
its violation and degradation? What could be more 
discouraging to man in his pathetic strivings after hard- 
won good than the thought that his effort adds nothing 
to the essential achievement of the world? On the other 
hand, what thought is more ennobling than the sense 
that I, with my poor effort, my aspiration and failure and 
renewed striving, am indispensable to the ideal perfec- 
tion, — that without my contribution it cannot be, and 
therefore that God needs me as truly as I need him? 
Upon what other ground can we justify our concern 
for the redemption of human beings from inhuman 
conditions, except by seeing the truth that each most 
wretched pauper and most befouled criminal has in him 



68 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

some element of spiritual uniqueness, without the realiza- 
tion of which the divine perfection is incomplete, and 
therefore imperfect, and therefore non-existent? 

It is easy to see, when we turn to the fields of history 
and psychology, that the actual rehgious interest of 
humanity has always been in the estabhshment among 
men of such relations as I have hinted at. Men have 
used the term God to denote any source of power by 
which their insatiable need for just relations could in any 
degree be met. Matthew Arnold said that the word God 
has practically meant ''the best one knows." It would, 
I think, be truer to say that God means "the best one 
can desire." This transfers the problem to the region of 
the will, and allows for the fact that desire perpetually 
outruns knowledge. We yearn for what is good before we 
know it; we desire the universal prevalence of a good 
which transcends all our possible knowledge. 

In the light of what has now been said, the distinction 
I before tried to make between reahty and existence may 
have grown clearer. The thing which any man desires 
so deeply that it acts as the magnet to his will, drawing 
his whole being into devotion to itself, is the supreme 
reahty of his Hfe. This truth is illustrated on every 
plane, the lowest as well as the highest. In commerce, 
men become absorbed in the pursuit of wealth which does 
not exist, but which for that very reason is to them more 
real than that which does exist. If the provisional 
definition of reality, as that which satisfies the will, be 
accepted, we shall have no difhculty in seeing that an 
ideal is the most real of all reaHties, because it is that 
which decides the fate of everything that merely exists. 
Ideals build up and destroy States and Churches. They 
determine the modifications effected by men even in the 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 69 

physical configuration of the earth. They preside over 
the issues of Ufe and death. In the clash between what 
is and what is desired consists the process and the prog- 
ress of creation. The will to seek the good is God's effort 
at self-reahzation. That desire transcending knowledge, 
demanding and creating the impossible, removing moun- 
tains and exalting valleys, wringing, as George Eliot 
said, "a human music from the indifferent air," — that 
desire is God. 

But God is more than the desire. He is also whatever 
in any measure satisfies it. This truth is the only clue 
that can guide us through the labyrinth of religious be- 
liefs which we find in history. So far as the contents of 
intellectualist doctrines are concerned, there is no com- 
mon denominator to which the gods can be reduced. If 
the fetish of the African savage, the Chinese joss, the 
popular deities of Greece and the purified God of Socrates 
and Plato, the old Germanic deities and the Father of 
Jesus Christ — if all these are gods, it must be in virtue 
of their common function and of the common relation 
in which men have stood toward them. It cannot be in 
virtue of any objective quality common to all the gods, 
for there is none. The kaleidoscope of the history of 
rehgion becomes a picture only when we define the gods, 
in Aristotelian fashion, in terms of their function. They 
are all conceived as centres of power which can be drawn 
upon, and as sources of such blessings as to their wor- 
shippers seem the highest that Kfe can offer. Religion is 
in practice the attempt to secure the favour and the 
active help of the sources of blessing by concentrating 
steadfast and reverent attention upon them. 

The type of behaviour of all men towards their gods is 
the same as that which they observe towards fellow men 



70 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and animals.^ Professor Leuba has grasped and worked 
out the implications of the fact that ''the reason for 
the existence of religion is not the objective truth of its 
conceptions, but its biological value." ^ It is to be dis- 
tinguished from the kind of behaviour by which men 
seek to control the non-living world, and from the 
magical practices by which extra-human agencies are 
assumed to be coerced. No doubt there is much of 
magic interblended with the specifically rehgious type of 
behaviour, but the distinction is always clear. 

Now it is obvious that the beneficial, or supposedly 
beneficial, results of religious practices are not dependent 
upon the objective truth of the doctrines held by those 
who perform them. Otherwise it would be impossible 
for the same results to be secured by men of radically 
different theological belief. But it would also be im- 
possible for any results at all to be reached if this type of 
behaviour did not bring men into rapport with some 
reality. If in literal strictness man had, as Tennyson 
said, "rolled the psalm to wintry skies, and built him 
fanes oi fruitless prayer," the whole of religion would be 
nothing but a form of insanity, and no results in the 
strengthening of the will, in the deepening of moral 
purpose and the clarification of spiritual vision, could 
ensue from it. The reality invoked may be quite differ- 
ent in nature from what men have supposed it, just as 

^ This is pointed out by Professor J. H. Leuba in the opening chapter 
of his valuable book, entitled A Psychological Study of Religion. (New 
York: Macmillan, 1912.) 

"^ I deprecate the use, in this otherwise excellent formula, of the term 
biological. If Professor Leuba had said life-enhancing, or any other term 
denoting the fact that the purpose of reUgion is not merely the static 
maintenance of life but the transcending of actually realized conditions, 
he would have commanded complete assent. 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 71 

many of the forces of nature which have long been used 
for human ends are now known to be different from what 
they were formerly believed to be. Like these natural 
forces, however, it may be benignly indifferent to human 
misconception and ready to bestow its blessings upon 
all who seek them. We use electricity without under- 
standing its nature; and it is in this fashion that men 
have used their gods. 

The reality which has thus been worshipped and 
drawn upon for strength, encouragement and moral 
quickening has many verifiable aspects which can be 
laid hold upon. We may define it provisionally as the 
sum-total of the good in the world, — meaning by that 
phrase not merely a qualitative abstraction, but an 
active force in humanity, and also all the concrete factors 
of experience which actually do make for the satisfaction 
of men's constitutional needs and the realization of their 
ideal visions. That this is what has been practically 
meant by God is shown by the evidence of common 
speech and by the unsophisticated conduct of simple- 
minded religious people. The notion of providence and 
of its intervention points to a vague discrimination 
between those events and forces which are indifferent 
or hostile to human purpose and those which are friendly 
toward it and yield it furtherance. 

Foremost in this latter category comes the good in 
man, consisting concretely of all the inward dispositions 
and outward acts which tend in the direction of estab- 
lishing the ideal order of human relations. Added to 
these are all the forces of objective nature which are or 
can be made subservient to the same end. 

The totality of the good as thus conceived is a real and 
positive fact of experience. In their attempt to under- 



72 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

stand it, to account for its achievements, its failures, and 
its relation to the forces opposed to it, men have fallen 
back upon myth. The religious experience is so deep 
and intimate as to be inexpressible. Since it involves all 
the problems of philosophy and science, it necessarily 
outruns our powers of adequate intellectual formulation. 
That which cannot be expressed in words has to be put 
into symbols; and those symbols are the gods. The 
strife of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the ail-but- victorious 
revolt of Satan against Jehovah, the torturing of the 
fire-bringer Prometheus by Jove, — these and a hundred 
other myths are the attempts which men have made to 
express the inexpressible. 

Nothing could be more pathetic, or more calculated to 
inspire reverence for the essential fineness of humanity, 
than these attempts to convey through legends the 
demand which the soul of man makes upon the world, 
and the response of the world to that demand. The 
Hebrew prophets were impressed supremely by the 
majesty and the unconditional binding force of the 
imperative of conscience. To them, this was the very 
voice of God, and the thought of its violation was in- 
tolerable. They expressed their sense of the majesty of 
the law by objectifying it in the only embodiment of 
authority that was famiHar to them. The personality of 
the king in the eastern world was the great emblem and 
centre of authority; and so they declared that God was a 
king incalculably great, — a king of kings and lord of lords. 

The Christian founders were less impressed with the 
inexorable dignity of the ethical imperative than with 
its loveliness and beneficence; and so for them the picture 
changes to that of a parent. The eternal moral order is 
imaged as a father pitying his children. The nations 



THE RE-INTERPRETATION OF GOD 73 

are prodigal sons who have wandered from the true 
relations in which their salvation consists, but the father 
is ready to welcome them with rejoicing the moment 
they are willing to return. 

In the later Catholic mythology this sense of intimate 
kindliness and love expresses itself anew by the picture 
of a maternal element in the Godhead. The so-called 
Mariolatry of the Roman Church symbolizes an aspect 
of man's relation to the power of righteousness which 
corresponds to a deep experience; and it is one of the 
shortcomings of Protestantism that it failed to provide 
any expression for this. It was felt that at the back of 
things there was the intuitively compassionate heart of 
a mother, as well as the mingled sternness and tenderness 
of a father. Even in its most degenerate form (for ex- 
ample, in the almost erotic devotion manifested in St. 
Alfonso di Liguori's treatise on Le Glorie di Maria) the 
psychology of this attitude is traceable. 

In order that justice may be done to these religious 
conceptions, it must be vividly realized that the ex- 
perience underlying them all is profoundly real. Every 
god, from the brutes of primitive devil-worship to the 
mother-love and the father-love adored by St. Francis 
of Assisi, represents some aspect of the world in its 
relation to the human will; each expresses a mood and 
a reaction induced by actual occurrences of life. Poets 
have quite spontaneously reproduced these pictures of 
the universe, — even those who have furiously denied the 
objective truth of the doctrines of theology. All their 
indignation at man's inhumanity and at the indifference 
of nature has been prompted by their inexpugnable loy- 
alty to *'the God behind the gods." If we reject the old 
myths, our chief reason for doing so must be our sense 



74 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

of their inadequacy. They do not exceed the truth; 
rather, they fall short of it. The law that commands 
and condemns us, the moral order to which we owe our 
being and with which is bound up all that we can hope 
for or aspire to, is yet nearer and more intimate than 
father or mother. The deepest element of our experience 
is not the sense of our dependence upon the universal 
power of good, but the sense of our identity with it. To 
call it "a power not ourselves" is to frame but a partial 
and misleading characterization of it. It is also our- 
selves, — or rather Ourself. It is that ultimate moral 
will in you and me which is identical with the ultimate 
will of all rational agents. Cancel all the private eccen- 
tricities, all the self-centred and self -regarding volitions 
and acts of men, out of which come their sorrows, their 
frustrations and their bitternesses, and there is left in 
each and in all one will, — the General Will of society as 
a whole, — which is identical with the universal moral 
law. ^'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," says 
Job the mystic. Yes; because at bottom I am he, — in 
the sense that, by virtue of my constitution, I will the 
decree that slays me. The ''great commanding good" 
that condemns and will destroy all that in me is base and 
unworthy, is the expression of my deepest spiritual need, 
and therefore of my real will, my inmost selfhood. This 
is the ultimate reahty of experience: closer than breath- 
ing, nearer than hands and feet. 

If we can but train ourselves to the vivid reaUzation 
of this truth, there will be an end to controversy between 
the theist and the atheist. We are all face to face with 
the same reality; our misunderstandings arise from our 
persistence in imposing our inadequate symbols of this 
reality upon one another as final and complete truth. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 

A PECULIAR difficulty stands in the way of popular 
comprehension and appreciation of the light thrown by 
modern research upon the character and teaching of the 
founder of Christianity. The old dogmatic and un- 
critical interpretation of him is still vociferous and con- 
fident. Its basis, indeed, is definitely shattered. Any- 
body who is wilhng to take a httle trouble can speedily 
famiharize himself with facts which render the eccle- 
siastical theory of Jesus as incredible as the story of 
Romulus and Remus. Yet, owing to a lack of courage 
on the part of those to whom the new fight has come, 
and to the confusing multipficity of views on points of 
detail entertained by the speciafists; owing, also, to the 
almost hypnotizing effect produced by the clamant 
confidence of the old interpretation, the new views have 
scarcely yet begun to affect the general consciousness. 
Indeed, except for a growing minority of clergy and of 
thoughtful church-members, we are still in the position 
which confronted Matthew Arnold more than forty years 
ago. On the one hand, believers in the old view will 
hear of no change in it. Those, on the other hand, to 
whom that view is repellent are apt to be impatient of 
the whole subject; they ignore the Bible, and are not 
wilfing to submit it to a fair and unprejudiced examina- 
tion. By this they lose immeasurably; but, as they are 
unconscious of their loss, they are content. 

75 



76 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

I desire in this chapter to enumerate a few points con- 
cerning the structure and contents of the Gospels, which 
are agreed upon by many competent critics, and to 
offer for the reader's consideration some views of my own 
as to the meaning and value of the teaching of Jesus. 
My purpose is not so much to expose the error of the 
older view; it is rather, by pointing out elements in the 
Gospels which are unquestionably there (however one 
may choose to explain them), to suggest an interpreta- 
tion which seems forced upon us by the facts, and which 
throws upon the character of Jesus a new Hght: a Hght 
that should endear him to all who admire courage, free- 
dom of thought, independence and originaUty of moral 
judgment, and faithfulness to ideals even unto death. 
My desire is to induce men to re-read the Gospels for 
themselves, by the aid of principles of criticism which will 
enable them to discriminate between earHer and later 
stages in the tradition. Thereby they will learn to dis- 
entangle the original elements, which from the himianistic 
point of view are incomparably grander than the theory 
of Christ that is embodied in the creeds and traditions 
of the Church. 

The first thing needful is that the student should assert 
his own right to independent judgment. He must refuse 
to be browbeaten either by the dogmatism of the ortho- 
dox expounder, or by the authority of the ultra-learned 
specialist. The case of the Gospels is analogous to that 
of Shakespearian criticism. In both fields we are con- 
fronted with a vast hterature of commentary and ex- 
plication, comprising the views of a multitude of con- 
flicting authorities. No living man could read all that 
has been written upon the Bible, or even upon the New 
Testament alone, though he gave his entire time to the 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 77 

task. If one decided not to read the Gospels until one 
had mastered all the critical literature, one would never 
get to the Gospels at all. The wisest course, under the 
circumstances, is to follow a hint given by Sir Walter 
Raleigh in his most valuable little book on Shakespeare.^ 
He advises that the reader should first get, by reading 
some one handbook on the subject, an approximately 
accurate notion of the chronological order of the plays 
and of the known facts of Shakespeare's life, and then 
should read the plays for himself, bringing his own critical 
judgment to bear upon their intrinsic beauties and their 
relative values. 

So, in regard to the New Testament, I would counsel 
the lay student not to spend a great deal of time in read- 
ing criticism, either higher or lower, either orthodox or 
innovating. The doctors disagree endlessly over details, 
and in the nature of the case there is such a lack of re- 
liable information regarding date and authorship, that 
confident judgment on such points is out of place even 
for speciaHsts. Very few, moreover, of the expert 
students have brought to their task the quahfications 
that are most essential for it. These are, not the know- 
ledge of enormous masses of facts, not the ability to per- 
form conjuring-tricks in the way of textual interpreta- 
tion, but wide experience of life, wide knowledge of and 
insight into general Hterature — especially poetry, — and 
freedom from prepossession and prejudice. 

The layman cannot do better than to begin by reading 
or re-reading Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma 
and God and the Bible. He will soon discover that 
these books, though written forty years ago, are still 
amazingly up-to-date as regards essentials. He will, 

^ In the "English Men of Letters" series. 



78 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

moreover, catch from Arnold that method of patient 
brooding over the text of the New Testament, which is 
the surest path to the attainment of real insight. He will 
learn in this way to allow for and to discount the special 
bias of Arnold, and to root out misguiding prejudice from 
himself. There is in Arnold a singular freedom from 
pedantry, a trained literary sense, and a genuine power 
of poetic analysis and construction, which renders him 
invaluable to all who seek wisdom rather than bare 
knowledge, and who have a practical interest in the 
life-value of great characters and great literature. These 
remarks apply to his treatment of the entire Bible, 
though my special interest at the moment is in his study 
of the teaching of Jesus. ^ 

An insight less poetic, though at times even more 
penetrating, is displayed in the celebrated work by Sir 
John Seeley, entitled Ecce Homo. To read it is to 
become a better and a wiser man, though its study would 
not enable one to pass an examination in the technical 
problems of New Testament criticism. Arnold's poetic 
power is supplemented by the statesmanlike historic and 
social sense of Seeley. Arnold's thought is mainly of 
the salvation of individuals; Seeley 's, of cities and na- 
tions. One learns from Seeley to appreciate the ex- 
traordinary freedom, originality and depth of insight 
displayed by some man or men whose thoughts are pre- 
served in the Gospels. One does not know, at the end, 
whether these thoughts and sayings are actually those 
of Jesus, of John the Baptist or John the Presbyter; 
whether they come from Mark or ''Q," from epistles by 
Paul, or from *'pseudepigrapha." One does not know; 

^ In chapters vi, vii, and viii of Literature ajid Dogma, and chapters iv, 
V, and vi of God and the Bible. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 79 

but, what is more important, one does not care. The 
importance of these problems to the expert and the 
specialist cannot, indeed, be over-estimated; but, on the 
other hand, their importance to the layman, who wishes 
to be in touch with reaHty and to get Hght and strength 
for the tasks of life, can scarcely be under-estimated. 

An almost unique combination of ethical and poetic 
insight with exhaustive scholarship is displayed in the 
great work on Jesus by Professor Nathaniel Schmidt of 
Cornell University.^ Those who lack leisure would do 
well to read the latter part of the fifth chapter of this 
book (beginning at the middle of page 107 and con- 
tinuing to page 134). They should then read from the 
beginning of chapter nine (on page 205) to the end of 
the volume. 

Perhaps the finest example of scientifically competent 
and impartial criticism in this field is the masterly study 
of the Gospels contributed to the Encyclopedia Bihlica 
by Professor Paul Schmiedel, of Zurich. It is a Hberal 
education to read and re-read this long article, weighing 
it point by point in confrontation with the texts of the 
Gospels as cited and interpreted in it. The Encyclopedia 
Bihlica can be consulted at almost any public library. 
It is unfortunate that the article on the Gospels is not 
reprinted in a volume by itself, since it is Hterally indis- 
pensable to all who desire not only to learn facts about 
the Gospels, but to train themselves in the art of sym- 
pathetic discrimination and exact study of the New 
Testament texts. 

I have enumerated five sources of information, three 
at least of which {i. e., the works of Seeley and Arnold) 

^ The Prophet of Nazareth^ by Nathaniel Schmidt. (New York: 
Macmillan, 1905.) 



8o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

are sneered at by some recent critics of the Bible, who 
accuse these authors of unscholarly procedure simply 
because they are not pedants, and are more concerned 
with Hfe- values than with a microscopic analysis of data 
which have httle meaning for the ordinary man. This, 
however, is precisely the reason for my high valuation 
and confident reconrmendation of them. What student 
has not grown weary of wading through the ponderous 
tomes, averaging twenty foot-notes to the page, in 
which theologians and anti-theologians devote endless 
chapters to the elaboration of arguments which are of no 
importance even if true, and which after all are mere 
speculations? Almost anybody can compile treatises of 
this kind, if he is willing to grub in Hbraries after the man- 
ner of Dominie Sampson; but nobody would be profited 
by his exertions. For such hack-work little equipment 
is needed beyond the tireless industry of the routineer, 
a certain amount of Hnguistic skill, and an "impartiality" 
which really means bHndness to the relative importance 
of facts. The thorough study of the higher criticism of 
the Bible compels one to labour through endless jungles 
of this kind; and this is perhaps one of the chief reasons 
why the very few incontrovertible facts and established 
results in this field have not become widely known. 

There are only two essential truths in connection with 
the Gospels which can be regarded as beyond dispute. 
The first is that nobody knows by whom or exactly when 
they were written; the second, that the accounts they 
give of the career of Jesus are hopelessly inconsistent, 
so that it is impossible to construct from them a co- 
herent story of his Hfe. Probably there are more Lives 
of Jesus in existence than there are books on any 
other one subject. Yet all of them are founded on these 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 8 1 

four brief ancient documents, which are not contempo- 
rary with the alleged events they record, nor written by 
eye-witnesses of them; and which, as we have said, are 
at vital points irreconcilable. No stronger proof of this 
contention need be looked for than the heroic efforts 
which have been made in the Church, from the time of 
Tatian onwards, to "harmonize" these four accounts. 
Here we have a long series of efforts, each tacitly con- 
fessing the failure of all that preceded it, to do what would 
not need doing if we had biographical accounts from 
contemporaries of Jesus and eye-witnesses of his work. 

We do not know the date of the birth of Jesus; we do 
not know positively the place. We do not know at what 
age he entered upon his ministry, or how long it lasted. 
We do not know his age at death, nor the year in which 
he died. Not until centuries after his time was a date 
arbitrarily chosen for the observance of his nativity; and, 
when the choice was made, it fell upon the birthday of 
the sun-gods. Of his parents we know Httle more than 
that their names were Joseph and Mary, and that he was 
not their only son. The facts of his birth and childhood 
are lost in a cloud of legends ; and the same is true of the 
end of his career. All that we can feel certain of is that 
he died by crucifixion. 

This paucity of information concerning the outward 
career of one who, after more than a century's develop- 
ment of his gospel, was enrolled among the gods, has 
led some thinkers to question whether the name of 
Jesus belongs to history at all. Within the last few 
years several volumes have been written to prove that 
it does not. I have not space to enter into this un- 
profitable controversy. I can only record here my 
conviction that the mythologists are mistaken. The 



82 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

chief reason for believing in the historicity of Jesus is the 
conflict between the picture of him which criticism can 
reconstruct from the oldest strata of the Gospels, as a 
human being with virtually no supernatural attributes, 
and the picture afterwards fabricated of him and framed 
in the oecumenical creeds, as a transcendental being with 
scarcely any vestige of humanity left about him. If, to 
put it briefly, Jesus had from the first been conceived of 
as a superhuman person, and had afterwards (by some 
extraordinary collective hallucination) been mistakenly 
supposed to have lived on earth as a man, then the 
development traceable in the accounts of him, from the 
earliest fragments of the New Testament to the time of 
the framing of the creeds, would have been the precise 
opposite of what it can be shown to have been. 

Our Gospels, whatever their dates, are not the oldest 
part of the New Testament. It is possible — indeed, it is 
probable — that they are founded upon bare collections of 
the sayings of Jesus, made by and for men who, having 
known him, did not need biographical information. But 
it is certain that by the time the demand arose for an 
account of his life, those who could have told the story 
authentically were no longer available. When the 
Christian movement began to spread as a missionary 
faith there was a special and well-understood reason why 
its converts did not at first demand written accounts of 
the earthly career of their founder. This reason was 
not the alleged fact that Jesus had never lived on earth 
at all, but the ascertained fact that those who believed 
in him expected very shortly to see him coming on the 
clouds from heaven, and to be taken up to join him 
there. 

The oldest fragments of the New Testament are 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 83 

certain letters of St. Paul, and in these the most pal- 
pable fact is the faith of the writer in the speedy second 
coming of his Lord, to wind up the affairs of a bankrupt 
and hopeless world. Now when men are in a state of 
tense expectation of a cosmic transformation-scene, when 
their whole gaze is focussed with earnest yearning upon 
the future, it is not to be expected that they shall devote 
themselves anxiously to the collection of data concerning 
the career of one whose earthly Hfe seems to them but a 
trivial incident in the midst of everlastingness. St. Paul 
was resolved not to know Christ ''after the flesh," even 
though he had formerly done so. His peculiar position, 
moreover, led him to disparage the personal intimacy of 
his colleagues with Jesus during his earthly life, since the 
exaltation of that connection implied a serious criticism 
of his own apostohc credentials. Thus is explained the 
fact of the silence of the earliest witness, which the 
mythologists are wont to insist upon as the chief evidence 
of their contention. Paul was silent because he de- 
Hberately wished to draw the attention of his converts 
away from the Hfe of Jesus, and to concentrate it upon 
his death and resurrection. I am not aware that any of 
the mythological school have denied St. Paul's intense 
and earnest belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 
But it is difficult to see how a man could believe in the 
resurrection of Jesus without beheving in his death, and 
in his death without believing in his earthly life. Nor is 
it possible to read the Epistles without being convinced 
of the overmastering impression which had been made 
upon Paul by the personahty that inspired him. It is 
sheer blindness to say, as one of the new myth-makers 
does, that Paul's Jesus is a mere name, ''a crucified 
phantom" — whatever that may be. The one self-evident 



84 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and indisputable fact in Paul's career is that he regarded 
himself as the disciple and minister of another. He was 
no cult-founder, no propagator of a movement originat- 
ing with himself. ''I live," he said, ''yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me." With Christ he was crucified, that 
he might share in Christ's resurrection. His language 
about the unsearchable riches in which he had been priv- 
ileged to share, his desire to depart and to be with the 
person he adored, his fidelity to a mission full of defeat 
and discouragement, — all these facts testify not to hal- 
lucination or self-deception, but to such an inspiration 
as necessarily implies behind it a personaKty of rare and 
exalted power. ^ As easily explain Plato without Socrates 
or Boswell without Johnson as Paul without Jesus. 

It is needless, however, to pursue an argument which 
to the majority both of special students and of laymen 
is obvious; and the case of Paul is only one of a score of 
cruces which confront those who seek to remove Jesus 
from the field of history. Equally insurmountable ob- 
stacles to such an attempt await us in the pages of the 
Gospels themselves. The moment it is explained why 
the first Christians did not desire information about 
their Lord's career, the objection on the ground of the 
incoherence and incredibility of the biographical details 
in the Gospels is dissipated. But there is a further in- 
contestable fact of the highest significance. Just as St. 
Paul is indubitably inspired by another, whom he counts 
immeasurably greater than himself, so it becomes obvious 
as we read the Gospels that their writers also are but 
the mouthpieces of one greater than they, the com- 
municators of a teaching which they, at all events, could 
not have invented, the depicters of a personaKty which 
^ Gal. ii, 20; Rom. vi, 3-7; Philip, iii, 7-12, etc. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 85 

they were sclf-evidently incapable of creating. One 
cannot study the Gospels critically without being im- 
pressed by the naivete and dulness, the lack of insight 
and imagination, of their compilers. If we see children 
making clay ligures and ornamenting them with jewels, 
we do not need to be told that the children did not make 
the jewels. There needs no elaborate process of critical 
analysis to assure us upon the point. Just such children 
were the evangelists; and just so incredible is it that they 
can have invented the teaching, or the traits of personal 
character disclosed by Jesus, which their narratives have 
perpetuated for us. It might as well be argued that 
Heminge and Condell wrote the plays of Shakespeare as 
that the evangelists invented Jesus and his teachings. 

The consensus of recent criticism asserts that the Gos- 
pel ascribed in our version to Mark was in its original 
form the oldest of the Synoptics, though in the form in 
which it has reached us many later touches have been in- 
troduced. Matthew and Luke, according to the hypothe- 
sis most generally accepted, proceeded upon a document 
substantially identical with Mark, and upon one other 
document, now lost, but capable of being partially recon- 
structed from their text. The lay reader can get for him- 
self a fairly clear idea of the evidence upon this point. ^ Let 
him place the three Synoptics side by side, and go through 
them to find out what all three have in common. He will 
find that both Matthew and Luke have a great deal from 
Mark. When he has thus used up Mark, let him examine 
Matthew and Luke to find out how much of what re- 
mains is common to them. He will again find a great 
deal which they share, but which is not in Mark. By this 

^ It is admirably set forth in Dr. F. C. Conybeare's Myth, Magic and 
Morals, chapters v-viii. (London: Watts &: Co., 1909.) 



86 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

time exceedingly little will be left of Luke and Matthew. 
The internal evidence further shows that both Matthew 
and Luke freely adapted the material which they drew 
from their sources, and did so with clearly defined pur- 
poses. 

The object of the Matthew Gospel is to demonstrate to 
Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. As such, his message 
must be exclusively to the Jews. He must be of Davidic 
lineage, and he must fulfil the prophecies of the Old 
Testament applying to the Messiah. The Matthew 
Gospel subordinates everything and manipulates every- 
thing to the end of sustaining these theses. Luke, on 
the other hand, writes as a Gentile to Gentiles, selecting 
and adapting his material with a view to demonstrating 
the universaHty of Christ's appeal. Thus from Matthew 
are omitted such parables as those of the Lost Coin, the 
Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the 
Pharisee and the Publican, and the Rich Man and 
Lazarus, all of which are unmistakably universal in their 
humanistic appeal. Matthew inserts many Judaizing 
particularities which Luke omits; for instance, the com- 
mand not to cast pearls before swine, ^ the instruction to 
the disciples not to go into the way of the Gentiles or 
enter into any city of the Samaritans,^ and the un- 
equivocal statement put upon the lips of Jesus, ''I was 
not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." ^ 

This contrast between Matthew and Luke comes out 
in numerous details. Repeatedly Luke voices condem- 
nations of the entire Jewish people which Matthew 
either omits or converts into condemnations of the 
Pharisees or other special groups, so as to remove the 
impression that the Jewish Messiah condemned liis own 
1 Matt, vii, 6. ^ Matt, x, 5. ^ Matt, xv, 24. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 87 

nation wholesale. Several of these Httle traits will be 
detected if Matthew's version of the parable of the Tal- 
ents (xxv, 14-30) be compared with Luke's (xix, 12-27.) 

The catholicity of Luke as compared with Matthew 
is an evidence of relative lateness. Mark seems to have 
in mind the problem of explaining to Gentiles why, if 
Jesus was the Messiah, he should have been rejected by 
his own people. He does this by the hypothesis of 
secrecy: Jesus would not suffer his messianic character 
to be known. Matthew, though he retains some traces 
of the secrecy hypothesis, addresses himself throughout 
to the task of con\dncing the Jews that they ought to 
have received Jesus as the Messiah. Luke, writing to 
Gentiles, is no longer conscious of the necessity of re- 
conciling the alleged Messiahship with the Jewish re- 
jection of it. The difficulty has evidently been got over 
in the meantime. 

The argument for the priority of Mark is further rein- 
forced by the fact that many human traits in the char- 
acter of Jesus are presented in it without any sophistica- 
tion, whereas these same incidents in Matthew or Luke 
are doctored to render them compatible with the rever- 
ence for the person of Jesus which was developing among 
the Christian groups. For example, in Mark vi, 5, it is 
represented that Jesus, preaching in his own country, 
discovered that, owing to the incredulity of those who 
had always known him, ''he could there do no mighty 
work." Li Mark (iii, 21) we are told that it was his 
friends who said, ''He is beside himself." Matthew and 
Luke ascribe such sayings to the Pharisees or to the 
"multitudes." John (x, 20) declares that it was "the 
Jews" who said of Jesus, "He hath a devil and is mad." 

The development of the legend is excellently illus- 



88 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

trated by the stories of the Birth and Baptism of Jesus. 
Mark has no birth-story; those of Matthew and Luke 
are late additions, and are in complete conflict with 
each other; and John, without any allusion at all to the 
circumstances of the birth, simply afi&rms that ''the 
Word was made flesh," though later he twice ^ represents 
men speaking of Jesus as "the son of Joseph," without 
any correction of their opinion. The genealogies in 
Matthew and Luke have nothing in common except the 
motive of demonstrating the Davidic descent of Jesus. 
This they do by tracing from David the pedigree of — 
Joseph. They thus represent a stage of beHef when 
Jesus was held to be something less than God, for no 
Jew had ever supposed that the Messiah was to be an 
incarnation of the divine personaHty, — Yahwe in bodily 
form on earth. They also prove that when they were 
compiled Jesus was beHeved to have been by normal 
generation the son of Joseph the carpenter. The sub- 
sequent working-over of these genealogies to make them 
consistent with the doctrine of virgin birth reduces them 
to palpable absurdity. How can the descent of a man 
from David be proved by giving the pedigree of one who 
was not his father? We know that in early times manu- 
scripts read at Matt, i, i6, "Joseph begat Jesus." We 
have one such ancient manuscript, — the Sinaitic Syriac 
palimpsest. Even without it, however, the evident 
logic of the case would force upon us the conviction 
that this was the original reading. In Luke iii, 23, the 
words "as was supposed" are an insertion, which, like 
the change in Matt, i, 16, makes utter nonsense of 
the pedigree which it introduces. The genealogies are 
indeed mutually exclusive, since they differ in detail 

1 John i, 45, vi, 42. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 89 

throughout. Their fortunate survival, however, enables 
us to trace, more confidently than we otherwise could 
have done, the growth of that myth which culminates in 
the oecumenical creeds. 

The story of the Baptism illustrates the development 
from another aspect. According to Mark's account 
(i, 9-1 1) there is no recognition of Jesus by John, and 
the vision of the dove descending from heaven is seen 
by Jesus alone. In Matt, (iii, 13-17), John, recog- 
nizing Jesus, seeks to dissuade him from undergoing 
baptism, on the ground that John needed to be baptized 
by Jesus, and not vice versa. In Luke (iii, 22) it is im- 
plied that the theophany was witnessed by the multi- 
tude. According to John (i, 29-34), the Baptist recog- 
nizes and announces Jesus not as the Jewish Messiah, 
but as the eternal divine saviour of the world. All 
these stories, with the possible exception of Mark's, are 
refuted by the subsequent testimony of Matthew and 
Luke, which record that John sent messengers from his 
prison to inquire of Jesus, "Art thou he that should 
come, or look we for another?" ^ — an impossible ques- 
tion to be addressed to one whom he had from the first 
perceived to be either the Messiah or the Lamb of God, 
especially if that perception had been ratified by a 
heavenly vision and voice. 

The myth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus may have 
originated in misunderstanding of some of his sayings. 
This apparently is the explanation of many of the al- 
leged miracles. 2 Several times the records betray both 
the good faith and the incompetence of the disciples by 
relating how Jesus was irritated by the impossibihty of 

^ Matt, xi, 3, Luke vii, 19. 

2 See Schmiedel, art. Gospels in Ency. Bib.^ §§ 137, 140, 142. 



90 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

making his associates understand him. Thus, for in- 
stance, the miracle of the feeding of multitudes with a 
few loaves and fishes probably represents a misunder- 
standing of the metaphorical use by Jesus of the term 
bread, in allusions to his teaching as the bread of Ufe. 
The resurrection stories may in like manner have taken 
their rise from sayings such as that preserved in Mark viii, 
35: ''For whosoever will save his hfe shall lose it; but 
whosoever shall lose his Hfe [for my sake and the gos- 
pel's], the same shall save it." ^ The misapprehension 
of such an idea by Hteral or pedantic minds, reinforced 
later by misunderstood passages from the Old Testa- 
ment, may have given rise to the stories of the bodily 
resurrection. 

These, however, fall by their inner incompatibihties. 
One has only to place them side by side to see that they 
are hopelessly inconsistent with each other, and also 
with the version of St. Paul. The Gospel of Mark origin- 
ally ended at the eighth verse of chapter xvi.^ All that 
is narrated of the resurrection up to that point is the 
story of an empty tomb and a vision of a young man 
in a white garment seen by two frightened women. Luke 
multipKes the one young man into two, and the long 
white garment into ''shining garments," and then pro- 
ceeds to add a number of details not given in any other 
Gospel. Matthew explains the rolling away of the stone 
by an earthquake, and transforms Mark's young man 
into an angel of the Lord, descended from heaven, with 
a countenance like lightning. Matthew also preserves 

1 Comparison with Matt, x, 39, and Luke xvii, 33, together with 
other reasons, makes it highly probable that the bracketed words did 
not form part of the original saying. 

2 See footnote to Mark xvi, 9, in R. V. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 91 

Mark's tradition that the risen Jesus, according to 
pre\^ous appointment, had gone to Galilee. Luke, on 
the contrary, declares that Jesus met two disciples near 
Jerusalem, with whom he returned to the city. John's 
version differs from all the rest by having two of the 
disciples on hand to meet the one woman who discovered 
that the sepulchre was open. This one woman, after 
her interview with two angels at the tomb, turns and 
meets Jesus in the garden, but does not recognize him. 
John has many other post-resurrection stories peculiar 
to himself, among them that of the scepticism of Thomas. 
This incident probably finds its motive in the need of 
refuting the Docetic heresy, according to which Jesus 
had never really lived in the flesh at all, but was, through- 
out his earthly career, a mere phantom. 

The growth of the legend, and our knowledge of the 
motives for inventing it, justify us in setting it aside as 
unhistorical, without wasting time over the problem of 
whether the re-animation of a truly dead man after 
thirty-six hours or more is or is not physically possible. 
Huxley, following some writers of the older German ra- 
tionahstic school, argues that there is no clear proof 
in the Gospels that Jesus was really dead when he was 
taken down from the cross. He might simply have 
swooned, and emerged from his grave when he recovered. 
According to Mark it cannot be said that Jesus remained 
in his grave until the morning of the third day. It was 
then that the stone v^d^s found to have been removed; 
but it might have been displaced at any time on the 
day preceding. One need not take the Huxleian hy- 
pothesis too seriously; yet the very fact that it could 
be framed without forcing the testimony of the Gospels 
demonstrates the looseness of structure of the narratives. 



92 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The miraculous legend of Jesus, however, grew up 
only because of the impression produced upon simple- 
minded contemporaries by his personality and his 
teaching; and for us to-day it is by his teaching that he 
must stand or fall. If we find evidence justifying the 
early impression that ''never man spake" as he, this will 
give us sufficient ground to entertain for him a rational 
veneration, and to ascribe to his words the same kind of 
authority as we attribute to any other sage or artist, — 
the degree of the authority varying with the comparative 
value of the message. The modern religious revolution 
does not consist in the rejection of miracles: it consists 
in the rejection of idolatry. Any teacher becomes an idol 
the moment men believe things merely because he said 
them, instead of beheving in him because of the inherent 
truth and worth of the things he said. If you believe, for 
example, in the principle of human brotherhood because 
Christ taught it, you are an idolater; but if you believe in 
Christ because he taught brotherhood, which you accept 
on independent grounds of reason and conscience, your 
veneration for him is morally and rationally legitimate. 
So that, from the standpoint of the religion of experience, 
the only question is whether we have in the words of 
Jesus some real contribution of wisdom and insight which 
we do not get so convincingly or so finely put from other 
teachers. 

It is this circumstance which renders so essentially 
irrelevant the logomachy over the historicity of Jesus. 
The teaching of the Gospels is what it is, from whomso- 
ever it may come. Our estimate of the teacher is de- 
pendent upon the value of the teaching, not vice versa. 
To say that it comes not from Jesus, but from anonymous 
disciples of one who never lived, is rather more idle 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 93 

than the dictum of the schoolboy, that the Iliad and 
Odyssey were written not by Homer, but by another 
poet of the same name. 

Now there is in the recorded utterances of Jesus one 
element about which the new mythological school is for 
the most part significantly silent. I refer to the Parables. 
The specifically ethical maxims of Jesus are not indu- 
plicable; all, or almost all, of them can be found in earher 
writings, Jewish and Gentile. This is not remarkable, 
even if Buckle be not wholly right in his contention that 
there are no discoveries in morals. But where are we 
to look for anticipations of the form, the contents, and 
the deep humanistic insight of the Parables of Jesus? 
To their hterary excellence I shall quote, instead of using 
poorer words of my own, the following eloquent testi- 
mony of Professor Nathaniel Schmidt: — 

In one province of art Jesus was a master. No man ever 
spoke as he. The beauty of his speech was as marked as its 
originality. Even the handful of fragments that has come 
down to us gives an impression of his extraordinary power. 
Though Oriental oratory abounds in figurative language and 
illustrative anecdote, and volumes of wise sayings prized "as 
apples of gold in baskets of silver" have been preserved from 
Hebrew antiquity, there is nothing that even approaches the 
parable of Jesus. It has the excellence that forbids imitation. 
There are works of art so perfect in their kind that the world 
instinctively leaves the sacred ground pre-empted by genius 
for other fields of endeavour. The beauty of nature im- 
pressed itseK upon the sensitive mind of Jesus, and was re- 
flected in the simplicity and grandeur, the harmony and 
radiance, of his speech. Each work of art in the Galilean 
master's gallery stands forth in maiden purity, chaste, modest 
and unconscious of its loveliness, yet breathes the breath of 



94 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

life. These characters of his creation will live as long as the 
human race. Churches may rise and fall, theological systems 
may come and go, works of great merit may be dropped into 
the limbo of forgotten things, but the love of inspiring art 
will itself secure against oblivion the Good Samaritan, Dives 
and Lazarus, the Foohsh Virgins, the Prodigal Son, the 
Sower, the Widow, the Shepherd, and their companions. 
Jesus may have known next to nothing of sculpture and 
painting, of music and drama, and may have had no idea of 
their place in the moral and spiritual development of man; 
but he knew as few know the art of touching all the chords 
that vibrate within the soul, the emotions, the will and the 
mind, and to lift and refine whenever he touched them.^ 

The parables of Jesus have suffered in a specially acute 
degree from the general neglect into which the Bible has 
fallen. More than any other part of the New Testament 
(except perhaps the Apocalypse), they have been the 
hunting-ground for wild and fantastic exegesis. They 
have been converted, as Professor Jiilicher ^ pithily ex- 
presses it, from Gleichnissreden into allegories. Esoteric 
meanings have been vainly sought in every item of 
the imagery, — in the ring, the shoe, the lamp, the talent. 
St. Augustine, though not perhaps one of the worst 
sinners in this respect, is yet responsible for the use of 
the phrase ^'Compel them to come in," taken from the 
parable of the Banquet, as a justification for religious 
persecution. So preposterously has the evident sense and 
the literary structure of the parables been distorted, to 
force them to yield meanings of which their author can- 
not have dreamed, that one is bound to S3niipathize with 
the legendary schoolboy, who, having been taught that a 
parable is ''an earthly story with a heavenly meaning," 
^ Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 362-63. ^ ^rt. Parables in Ency. Bib. 



THE RE-DTSCO\ERY OF JESUS CHRIST 95 

inverted the definition in his examination paper, and 
declared that a parable is a heavenly story with no 
earthly meaning. The follies of commentators, however, 
cannot justly be visited upon the head of Jesus, any more 
than in the case of any other poet. The cure for false the- 
ology, said Emerson, is mother- wit; and the cure for pe- 
dantic absurdities of interpretation is a re-examination of 
the texts in the light of common sense and hterary insight. 

The parable form is not peculiar to the New Testa- 
ment. There are several examples of it in the Old 
Testament, one of which (the homily read by Nathan to 
Da\dd in II Samuel xii, 1-7) is as fine and apt as anything 
in the Gospels. But whereas the parable is rare and 
exceptional in the older scriptures, in the Gospels it is 
usual and frequent. It is there that we find ascribed to 
Jesus those masterpieces which, as Schmidt says, forbid 
imitation. 

The first problem that confronts us when we begin to 
study the use of the parable by Jesus is the question of 
the secrecy of his teaching. This, as we have noted 
above, is the thesis of Mark. The deHverances of that 
evangehst are somewhat incoherent, both among them- 
selves and as compared with the testimony of the other 
Gospels. Mark iv, 10-13, reads as follows: 

(10) And when he was alone, they that were about him 
with the twelve asked of him the parables. (11) And he 
said unto them. Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom 
of God: but unto them that are without, all things are done 
in parables: (12) that seeing they may see, and not perceive; 
and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest haply 
they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them. 
(13) And he saith unto them. Know ye not this parable? 
and how shall ye know all the parables? 



96 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Verses ii and 12, with their bitter cynicism, are pre- 
sumably a later insertion, since verse 13 follows nat- 
urally after verse 10. Moreover, these two added verses 
are flatly incongruous with verses 21-24 of the same 
chapter, and more particularly with verses 33 and 34, 
which give the following humane and common-sense 
explanation of the use of parables: 

And with many such parables spake he the word unto 
them, as they were able to hear it: and without a parable 
spake he not unto them: but privately to his own disciples 
he expounded all things. 

The same explanation is given also in Matt, xiii, 13: 

Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing 
they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
understand. 

The question, however, is again complicated by the 
citation from Isaiah in verses 14 ff . 

Here, then, we have two explanations; — the one, that 
Jesus taught in parables because without them the 
multitude could not understand ; the other, that he used 
the parables in order to prevent them from understanding 
him. This is a charming problem, over which the 
harmonizers and reconcilers may quarrel till doomsday. 
The higher critics as a rule assume that the two tradi- 
tions are mutually exclusive. We may readily agree 
with them that Jesus cannot be correctly reported in this 
particular place both by Matthew and Mark. It cer- 
tainly is not conceivable that he can have said both these 
things at the same time, in reply to questions from his 
disciples about the parable of the Sower. 

We ought, however, to remember that every man says 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OE JESUS CHRIST 97 

conflicting things upon dilTcrcnt occasions, and that 
each of two assertions which are incompatible with each 
other may be consistent with the special circumstances 
of the moment at which it is uttered. Everything we 
say presupposes a huge context of things which we do not 
say, but which, being understood and taken for granted 
by our companions, provides the necessary light for the 
interpretation of our words. If isolated fragments of 
the conversation of any man were jotted down in differ- 
ent years and afterwards juxtaposed by some clumsy 
redactor, a thousand seeming inconsistencies could not 
fail to arise. So it well may be that Jesus at different 
times adopted different courses. One cannot believe, 
indeed, that he resorted to the trick of systematically 
dividing his teaching into exoteric and esoteric; but there 
are traces of a growing conflict between him and the 
rehgious and poHtical authorities of his nation, which 
may at times have forced upon him a device to which 
every propagandist is sometimes compelled to resort, — 
that, namely, of using language which would convey 
his meaning to the initiated and to sympathizers, while 
concealing it from hostile outsiders. 

Jesus evidently foresaw the fact that his work would 
some day bring him into colHsion with the ruHng powers. 
He was no revolutionist in the vulgar sense, — no claptrap 
Messiah seeking to establish a petty kingdom in place of 
the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire. He was, how- 
ever, a propagandist of ethical and social principles 
calculated to produce disturbance within any existing 
system of government, civil or religious. To demand 
social righteousness is more menacing than to seek to 
substitute monarchy for imperialism, or repubhcanism 
for monarchy. To insist upon the cleansing of the inside 



98 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

of the cup is more far-reaching than to change a king into 
a president, or a priest into a minister. There is con- 
siderable uncertainty as to the exact shape which the 
idea of the kingdom of God took in the mind of Jesus. ^ 
Nobody but a pedant can pretend to give a detailed 
chart of the order of society which would come about 
through the adoption of just principles. But that Jesus 
became early suspected of revolutionary designs is made 
clear, among other things, by the entrapping questions 
occasionally put to him. And that he saw through the 
wiles of his enemies is shown by the evasive answers he 
returned. For example, when priests and scribes inquire 
as to the authority by which he taught and laboured, he 
replies by asking them a question concerning the creden- 
tials of John the Baptist, which they dare not answer. ^ 
And again, when certain politicians seek to embroil him 
either with the people or with the Roman authorities by a 
trick question about the lawfulness of paying tribute to 

^ Considerations of space, as well as of subject-matter, constrain me 
to omit the discussion of the now fashionable theory of " thorough- 
going eschatology," set forth in many recent works, and with special 
freshness and ability by Albert Schweitzer, in The Quest of the Historical 
Jesus and The Mystery of the Kingdom of God. Readers famihar with the 
controversy will agree, I think, that the arguments in the text do not de- 
pend for their vaHdity upon the determination of the eschatological issue. 

2 Mk. xi, 27-33, R. v.: "And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he 
was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the 
scribes, and the elders; and they said unto him. By what authority doest 
thou these things? or who gave thee this authority to do these things? 
And Jesus said unto them, I will ask of you one question, and answer 
me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The bap- 
tism of John, was it from heaven, or from men? answer me. And they 
reasoned with themselves saying. If we shall say, From heaven; he will 
say, Why then did ye not believe him? But should we say. From men — 
they feared the people : for all verily held John to be a prophet. And they 
answered Jesus and say, We know not. And Jesus saith unto them, 
Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things." 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 99 

Caesar, he replies with an oracular dictum that reminds 
one of Captain Jack Bunsby.^ 

Professor JiiUcher opposes to the secrecy theory the 
alleged fact that a great body of the teaching of Jesus 
addressed to the multitudes is non-parabolic, instancing 
especially the long passage, Matt, v, i-vii, 27. Here, 
however, arises one of the most interesting of all the 
problems connected with the teaching of Jesus. This 
long passage is introduced with the statement that the 
teaching it contains was addressed exclusively to the 
immediate disciples.^ Unfortunately, the evangehst 
creates a problem for us by informing us (vii, 28) that 
*'When Jesus had finished these words, the multitudes 
were astonished at his teaching : for he taught them as one 
having authority, and not as their scribes." Here we 
have another splendid file for the harmonizers to break 
their teeth upon. 

The dilemma is presented over again in the correspond- 
ing passage of St. Luke. That Gospel informs us (vi, 20) 
that "He lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said" — 

^ Mk. xii, 13-17, R. v.: "And they send unto him certain of the Phar- 
isees and of the Herodians, that they might catch him in talk. And 
when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou 
art true, and carest not for any one; for thou regardest not the person 
of men, but of a truth teachest the way of God: Is it lawful to give 
tribute unto Caesar or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, 
knowing their hjpocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me 
a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And he saith unto 
them. Whose is this image and superscription? And they said unto 
him, Caesar's. And Jesus said unto them. Render unto Cassar the 
things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. And 
they marvelled greatly at him." 

2 Matt. V, I : "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain: 
and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him: and he opened 
his mouth and taught them, saying," etc. The plain implication is that 
he had climbed the hill to escape from the crowds which had followed 
him from Galilee, DecapoUs, and elsewhere. (See the preceding verses.) 



lOO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

all that follows down to verse 49. Then it is straightway 
added: ''After he had ended all his sayings in the ears of 
the people, he entered into Capernaum." 

It is palpable that the teaching in Matthew which 
begins with the Beatitudes and continues for three whole 
chapters was never given consecutively as a sermon. 
No teacher would utter seriatim, without comment or 
connecting words, such a series of quintessential maxims 
and epigrams. They epitomize the reflection and the 
garnered wisdom of a lifetime. Many of them, too, are 
old sayings, earher versions of which have been traced, — 
for example, in one of the recently recovered translations 
of the Book of Enoch. On grounds of general probability 
we may infer that much of this teaching was voiced by 
Jesus both pubKcly to the multitude and privately to his 
immediate coadjutors, but also that much of it was given 
to the latter alone. The comparison between his auditors 
and the persecuted prophets,^ for instance, is enormously 
more appropriate as addressed to a select group of co- 
workers than to the indiscriminate crowd. The char- 
acterization, again, of those addressed as the salt of the 
earth ^ is practically impossible as applied to a promis- 
cuous assembly, containing enemies as well as friends. 

Again, there is much in the so-called Sermon which 
seems fanatical and impracticable if construed as counsel 
to ordinary men for the guidance of ordinary Hfe, but 
which is emphatically wise and appropriate as a code for 
the conduct of missionaries of an unpopular cause, likely 
to encounter persecution.^ Non-resistance as a maxim 

1 Matt. V, 11-12. 2 Matt, v, 13. 

3 E. g., Matt. V, 38-48, containing the doctrine of non-resistance, the 
command to turn the other cheek, to give the cloak to him who takes 
the coat, etc. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST loi 

for the laity would make life impossible. It would enable 
the masterful to inherit the earth, and lead to bitter 
enslavement for all but a handful of mankind. Yet this 
very attitude is that which makes the martyr invulnera- 
ble, and gives to the prophet of spiritual reformation an 
irresistible authority. There is nothing in the career of 
Jesus consistent with the notion that he was a senti- 
mental fanatic of the Tolstoian type. He was quite 
ready both to denounce judgment upon evildoers and to 
resort to the use of force when the matter in dispute was 
not a personal one.^ He would not, however, seek to 
avenge by violence any insult or injury to himself. It 
seems, then, not altogether arbitrary to suggest that this 
much-criticized teaching of non-resistance was part of 
the special instruction given by Jesus to the disseminators 
of his message, with a view to those peculiar exigencies of 
their task to which it is admirably adapted. Such an 
interpretation accords at least as well with the context of 
the Gospels as the contrary one ; and it has the advantage 
of rescuing Jesus from the imputation (so inconsistent, as 
we shall see, with the rest of his teaching) of being a kind 
of Sunday-school milksop. 

Returning to the question of secrecy, we may note the 
objection, based on Matt, xxi, 45, that the Pharisees who 
had overheard the parable of the Vineyard understood it, 
and saw that it was meant for them. I would repeat, 
however, that it does not follow from this that Jesus 
never desired to conceal his meaning. His fondness for 
the aphorism, ''He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," 
suggests an acute and almost humorous sense of the 
differences of capacity among his auditors. He knew by 
close observation how self-centredness and self-deification 
^ Matt, xxi, 12 ff., Mark xi, 15 ff., John ii, 14 fif. 



I02 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

render the perception obtuse. His own familiar friends 
were sadly impenetrable, and he often resents the ne- 
cessity of laboriously explaining to them things that 
should have been self-evident.^ It is obvious that he 
often suffered, as would any poet whose figurative speech 
was taken literally; and it well may be that weariness of 
this sometimes led him to say, not without irritation, 
''He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 

A remarkable analogy exists between the parables of 
Christ and the ancient folk-lore fables which we associate 
with the name of ^sop. These illustrate exactly that 
combination of secrecy and openness which we find in 
the tales of Jesus. It has sometimes seemed to me that 
the only people who can suppose yEsop's fables to be fit 
reading for young children are those who having eyes see 
not, and having ears fail to hear. For these fables mask 
under their delightful imagery all the bitter and tragic 
resentment of the poor and enslaved against the rich and 
prosperous. The cunning they commend is a c3Tiical 
crystallization of the lesson taught by cruel experience of 
the inhumanity of the ' ' haves ' ' to the ' ' have-nots . ' ' The 
earthen pot floating down the stream must avoid the 
brass pot, for, if the two collide, the earthen pot will be 
shattered to fragments. The earthen pot is the poor 
man; he must avoid the society of the rich and powerful. 
Such is also the half-concealed meaning of the stories of 
the wolf and the lamb, the fox and the goat. /Esop 
warns the poor and the enslaved to be on their guard 
against the blandishments and the heartless deceits of the 
rich and free. 

1 Matt. XV, 15 ff.; xvi, 9 ff.; Mark viii, 16 ff. The characterization of 
his followers as "babes" (Matt, xi, 25), if authentic, is another evidence 
of his sense of the situation. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 103 

One great group of the parables of Jesus is in like man- 
ner addressed to the poor and oppressed. These parables 
are not bitterly cynical like the fables of iEsop, and they 
do not convey a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, 
like that which breathes through the fable of the earthen 
pot. They are rather an appeal to self-reliance and co- 
operation, implying a confident consciousness that by 
these means the blessings of which the poor and outcast 
are deprived could be won. 

There is in the savings of Jesus a realistic sense of the 
actual conditions of life, which for his time, and in view 
of his circumstances, is amazingly original. He insists 
that people seeking any sort of advancement in life must 
rely upon themselves, and not trust to outside powers. 
He repeatedly emphasizes that doctrine of the moral 
indifference of nature which, as presented by thinkers in 
the nineteenth century, has been denounced as atheistic. 
He points to the fact that the sun shines impartially on 
the just and the unjust, and the rain falls ahke on the evil 
and on the good. There is a favourite saying of his which 
in the three Synoptics is repeated five times over,^ a fact 
which justifies the inference that it was a characteristic 
maxim, repeated many more than five times by Jesus. 
This is the saying, rendered with slight differences of 
wording: ''To him that hath shall be given, and from him 
that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." 
There could not be a more perfect summary of the doc- 
trine familiarly known to us as the struggle for existence 
and the survival of the fittest. 

The denial of special providences, conveyed by the 
aphorism about the sun and the rain, is repeated very em- 

^ Matt, xiii, 13, xxv, 29 (Parable of Talents), Mark iv, 25, Luke viii, 18, 
xix, 26. 



I04 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

phatically in Luke xiii, 1-5, in which Jesus declares that 
victims of a barbarous sentence and a tragic accident were 
not thereby proved to be worse sinners than their neigh- 
bours. This is a stinging rebuke to the towering egotism 
which imagines that the order of the universe is inter- 
rupted to inflict exemplary punishment upon wrong- 
doers or bestow palmary rewards upon individuals of 
exceptional piety. Jesus is almost as satirical as Hotspur 
to the braggart Glendower.^ 

In studying the parables of Jesus, then, we must begin 
by clearing our minds of the Sunday-school notion of the 
man whose teaching Hes before us. He is not a senti- 
mentahst, not a dreamer; not a bloodless phantasm, such 
as he is made to look in many of the old pictures. Neither 
is he a pedantic theologian, bent on forcing the facts of 
life to fit some preconceived theory. Rather, he is at 
once a poet and a reformer. He is '' that most formidable 
of all combinations, a mystic and a man of action.'' He 
has, indeed, a serene and imperturbable faith in the 
ultimate Tightness of things. His confidence that the 
universe is sound at heart reposes upon the mystic in- 
tuition that the disinterested and super-personal will in 
himself is identical with the innermost core of the world. 
But this intuition, — which is in truth the working faith 
of all reformers and martyrs, — is consistent with the 
clearest and most unilluded perception of the obstacles 

^ King Henry IV, Part I, Act iii, Scene i: 
Glendower: At my nativity 

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes 

Of burning cressets; and at my birth 

The frame and huge foundation of the earth 

Shaked like a coward. 
Hotspur: Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's 

cat had but kitten'd, though yourself had never been born. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 105 

and resistances to righteousness opposed not only by the 
outer world, but also by the self-regarding will of men and 
women, and especially of the masters of things as they 
are. Jesus feels that most of the evils suffered by the 
poor and the oppressed are due to their own apathy, and 
to their neglect of the irresistible power which they 
unitedly could exercise. 

His call to them is, accordingly, a challenge to alertness 
and efSciency. It is perhaps not surprising that the 
old doctrinal interpretation assigned fantastic theological 
meanings to these parables, for their lesson is not, in the 
ordinary narrow sense, an ethical one. In the parable of 
the Tares, ^ of the Thief,^ of the Hidden Treasure,^ of the 
Pearl,"* of the Lost Sheep,^ as well as in the longer stories 
of the Talents,^ the Ten Virgins,^ and the Wedding Gar- 
ment,^ we have no neat little examples of "material for 
moral instruction," with the moral symmetrically nailed 
on at the end, but vivid hints of the hard and brutal 
reahty that confronts men, — especially those men who 
seek the good. These parables all centre in the idea that 
many are called and few chosen, and that the prize of 
success in any undertaking goes only to him that hath — 
to him, that is, who is endowed with that minimum of 
advantages which enables him to cope successfully with 
his environment. 

The most sensational instance of this ruthless realism is 
afforded by the parable of the Unjust Steward, which has 
always been a stumbling-block to commentators. The 
version we have of it (Luke xvi, 1-13) has evidently been 

^ Matt, xiii, 24-30. ^ Matt, xviii, 12. 

2 Matt, xxiv, 43. ^ Matt, xxv, 14-30. 

' Matt, xiii, 44. ^ Matt, xxv, 1-13. 

^ Matt, xiii, 45-46. * Matt, xxii, 1-14. 



io6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

worked over from verse lo onwards by puzzled theo- 
logians, who could not edit away its apparent meaning, 
and yet were aghast at it. In that story a thief is 
commended, — not, indeed, for his theft, but for his 
alertness and skill in adapting his circumstances to his 
needs. 

This is but an exceptionally glaring proof of my conten- 
tion as to the meaning of the series of stories which I shall 
venture to call the Efficiency Parables. These have 
nothing whatever to do with salvation in a Hfe after 
death, with correctness of theological beHef , or even with 
moral character, in the ordinary and limited sense of that 
phrase. The five foohsh virgins are not represented as 
believing more or less than the wise, or as being morally 
inferior to them. Their folly consists in their unreadiness, 
their failure to prepare for the call of opportunity or to 
anticipate the circumstances with which they will have to 
cope. The unjust steward is commended, "because he 
had done wisely : for the sons of this age are for their own 
generation wiser than the sons of the light.' ^ 

Jesus, Hke every practical reformer, encountered the 
disheartening fact that good people are often good for 
nothing. They are ineffectual; they sit apathetically 
waiting for the law of righteousness to execute itself. 
They will not combine with others, they will not organize 
the forces in men and things which must be marshalled 
before victory can be attained. The sons of this age are 
indeed wiser. Who that has sought to overthrow any 
concrete evil has not learned to wonder at and to respect 
the never-sleeping vigilance of those who, profiting by 
the evil, desire its continuance? The white slave traffic, 
the liquor interest, the exploiters of child labour, the 
capitalistic opposers of the just claims of the working- 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 107 

class, — all these seem to be hydra-headed and argus-eyed. 
No chance for a successful coup ever eludes them. Their 
grasp is upon all our political and municipal machinery. 
Their emissaries are to be found at every strategical 
point. If at long intervals the far more numerous forces 
of good are successfully organized against them, they 
know that they have but to bide their time until the next 
election, or the next lock-out, meantime judiciously dis- 
tributing backsheesh and raising sham issues to divert 
the public attention from themselves and their de- 
signs. 

This, then, is the excellent foppery of the world, — 
that they who believe in the good leave it to come of 
itself, superstitiously trusting the blind forces of nature 
to give them a victory they ''have done naught to earn"; 
whereas all the powers of darkness, with perception 
sharpened by self-interest, count upon no effect unless 
they have with deadly efficiency marshalled the natural 
causes that cannot fail to bring it about. The lesson that 
Jesus read to his contemporaries has to be learned over 
again, in sorrow and disillusionment, by the reformers of 
every new generation. 

But Jesus, as I have said, is as little a pessimist as he is 
a sentimental optimist. He sees where the strength of 
evil lies, — in the never- wearying vigilance of those who 
make evil their good. But he also sees that the forces 
of the world are ready to wait upon the will of those who 
seek justice and righteousness, as soon as they comply 
with the conditions that inhere in the eternal order of 
things. 

We miss the whole point of the great parable of the 
Talents if we fail to see that its lesson is for the man 
with the one talent. The reason, says Jesus in effect, 



lo8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

why the world is governed by a haughty and brutal 
aristocracy in Church and State, is not because that 
aristocracy consists of persons whose ability is to that of 
average mankind as five to one or as two to one. It is 
simply because the mass fails to make use of such natural 
endowments as it does possess. This is the secret of 
democracy, which consists essentially in an appeal to the 
uncommon possibilities of the common man. The 
preaching of the will to power as a doctrine for aristocrats 
and supermen is from this point of view a serious mis- 
take, for it may perchance be overheard by the com- 
monalty. When the poorly gifted realize that ten men 
possessing one talent each are stronger than any one 
man with five talents, we may see a democratic assertion 
of the will to power, which will make a compendious end 
of all the tyrannies, religious, poHtical and economic, 
under which the race is as yet groaning. What is the 
whole organization of the proletariat in our modern 
nations, the formation of labour unions and sociaHst po- 
litical parties, but a seizing upon the lesson taught to 
the have-nots and the outcasts nineteen centuries ago by 
the proletarian Founder of the Christian Church? In 
any nation, the latent power of the oppressed majority is 
necessarily greater than that of the oppressing minority. 
In this ultimate sense it may be said that every people 
gets the government it deserves. But commonly the 
majority sleeps or permits itself to be blinded to its true 
interests by the crafts and wiles of its exploiters. Yet 
even to-day the great awakening is in process. Every- 
where the man with the one talent is unwrapping it from 
the napkin in which he had hidden it in the earth, and is 
pooling it with the single talents of his neighbours. The 
triumph of democracy throughout the world which will 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 109 

thus be brought about will be one expression of the 
triumph of Jesus Christ; for it will be effected by an 
appHcation of his teaching. 

It is to be noted that when Jesus recognizes the moral 
indifference of nature, he passes no ethical judgment upon 
the law that he detects. He merely states the fact, with- 
out pausing to justify or condemn it. The sun, he tells 
us, shines on the just and the unjust; the rain falls upon 
the evil and upon the good. To him that hath shall be 
given; therefore (he implies), see that you have, in order 
that you may have more. He does not say that this law 
of nature is ideally just. He leaves open the question 
whether the world-order may not be anti-human and 
inhuman. Like a modern man of science, he seeks to 
define precisely the conditions under which the game of 
life must be played. He denies utterly the naive moral 
theology of the early Jews, who thought that compKance 
with the law of righteousness on the part of individuals 
was an infallible means to success. He would have 
laughed to scorn that childhke psalmist who said, "I 
have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the 
righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." ^ 
Such a doctrine he would rightly have regarded as the 
essence of superstition. Matthew Arnold has put the 
truth into lines that seem but a paraphrase of the 
words of Jesus: — 

Streams will not curb their pride 

The just man not to entomb, 
Nor lightnings go aside 
To leave his virtues room; 
Nor is that wind less rough that blows a good man's barge. 

^ Ps. xxxvii, 25. 



no THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Nature, with equal mind, 

Sees all her sons at play, — 
Sees man control the wind, 
The wind sweep man away, — 
Allows the proudly riding and the foundering bark.i 

This is a stern teaching; yet the truth, however rigorous 
it seem, is more precious than any flattering illusion. 
Nobody will discuss whether the outward order of things 
is moral or immoral, unless he is still slumbering in the 
dreamland of anthropomorphism. If we read the order 
of laws and events in the world as the expression of a 
personal will, we shall have to appraise it in ethical 
terms. We then shall find ourselves involved in per- 
petual doubt as to whether the will it expresses is divine 
or diabolical. We cut away the ground, however, from 
this idle controversy by recognizing the impersonahty, 
and consequently the non-morality, of the outward order 
of things. The world with its laws is neither moral nor 
immoral, and places no handicap either upon morality or 
immorality. The only valid faith is that which accepts 
this fact, and does not try to blink it or to soften the 
harshness of its impHcations. 

But it is precisely this indifference, this impartiality, 
of the universe, which gives the opportunity for the eth- 
ical will to embody itself. If nature were anti-moral, 
if the dice were loaded in favour of evil, the cause of 
righteousness would be foredoomed to failure. If, on the 
other hand, the world-order foreordained the victory of 
right, then right would be but another name for cunning 
prudence and self-interest, and the nobility of virtue 
would surcease. Because nature is impartial, the re- 

^ Arnold, Empedocles on Etna. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST iii 

sponsibility lies upon man to create the righteous order 
that he dreams of, and, in labouring for it, to create 
himself into something nobler than his original condition. 

Alongside of the group of stories which preach the 
doctrine I have just elaborated, and which I have called 
for convenience the Efficiency Parables, lies another 
series, which may be termed for distinction the Ethical 
Parables. Under this heading fall all those beautiful 
tales preserved in Luke, but omitted from Matthew 
because, as we have seen, they preach a universalist 
doctrine to which that evangelist was opposed. It was 
early believed that such characters as Lazarus and the 
Prodigal Son represented the Gentile nations, the Rich 
Man of the Lazarus story and the Elder Brother of the 
Prodigal standing for the Jews. If this interpretation 
rightly seizes the thought of the narrator, it only throws 
into a still finer Hght the marvellous art of the charac- 
terization. In the case of the story of the Good Samar- 
itan, there can be no question whatever as to the purport. 
The greater nobility of the despised foreigner is thrust 
into the teeth of the narrow and race-proud Jew, and the 
ancient doctrine of duty to one's neighbour undergoes a 
broadening which at one stroke purges it of hateful ex- 
clusiveness. 

The literature of the world does not contain the 
artistic equal of the tale of the Prodigal Son. In twenty- 
two short verses are presented to us three perfectly 
depicted and marvellously contrasted types of character. 
Many conventional valuations are revalued in the pure 
white Kght of its ethical vision. With what skill is 
brought out the inward vileness of the respectable elder 
brother, whose ungenerous spirit cared only for favours 
received, and meted out its curmudgeonly loyalty in 



112 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

strict proportion to the amount of its rewards! How 
finely is this contrasted with the open-hearted generosity 
of the father, — willing, indeed, to let the wayward child 
dree his weird; resigned, though with grief, to the in- 
evitableness of the bitter price he must pay for his 
experience; but ready to pour out his unstinted bene- 
volence the moment there is any expression of penitence 
on the prodigal's part. 

The inner secret of the democratic faith of Jesus, 
however, is his recognition of the hidden fineness even of 
vile persons. The blackguard prodigal had indeed been 
basely ungrateful to his father, and had devoured that 
father's living with harlots. Yet he it is who exhibits a 
truly magnificent gleam of character the moment he 
comes to himself. The faith of democracy is that the 
real self, to which any man comes when his eyes are 
truly opened and he sees realities as they are, is always a 
noble and splendid self, capable of all justice, of every 
generosity and every renunciation. This is the self which 
in the prodigal rises to the height of the sentiment, *'I 
have sinned against heaven and in thy sight; I am no 
more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of 
thy hired servants." It is the same self which in the 
father overflows in the generosity that gives to the re- 
turned wanderer the best robe, places the ring on his 
finger and the shoes on his feet, and kills for him the 
fatted calf; the same which, in the parable of the La- 
bourers in the Vineyard, gives magnanimously ''unto 
this last" even as unto those who have toiled all the day: 
taking their need, not their desert, as the measure of 
what they are to receive. 

In the literary miracle of the parable of the Pharisee 
and the Publican, this conviction of the inherent fineness 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 113 

of humanity blasts the dark idolatry of self in the irre- 
proachable religious leader with the same lightning that 
reveals the unsuspected nobility of the publican. Jesus 
does not need to preach or moralize — he can destroy with 
description and create with disclosure. Nor can we 
cease to wonder at the utter freedom from sentimentality 
which takes for its example not a character that is falsely 
condemned by conventional standards, but one that is 
truly censurable according to genuinely ethical canons. 
The pubhcan, who for hire had made himself the instru- 
ment of foreign tyranny over his compatriots, and who 
had swindled both his employers and his victims into 
the bargain, is a man whom every disinterested onlooker 
would rightly dislike. Yet, according to Jesus, when 
even he comes to his true self, he finds that it is a self 
which condemns his record. By uttering the prayer 
*' God be merciful to me a sinner," the pubhcan identifies 
himself with the justice whose verdict is against him. 
Emerson held the conviction that Jesus was the only 
man in all history who had justly estimated the greatness 
of man.^ This tribute to the GaHlean has been con- 
demned as sentimental. In associating myself with it, I 
would ask the critics how otherwise they can explain the 
facts to which I have pointed. Here is the insight that 
pierces through the rags and the vileness to the hidden 
royalty. We do not read it into the Gospels; there it is: 
and where else shall we find it? Not in the aristocratic 
satires of Plato upon democracy; not in Aristotle's ac- 
ceptance of slavery as a part of the order of nature; not 
in the Buddhist condemnation of all individuaHzed ex- 
istence as an incurable evil to be fled from; not in the 

^ Divinity College Address. Concord edit, of Emerson, vol. i, p. 1 28. 
(Houghton, Mififlin.) 



114 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

abstract and theoretical humanitarianism of the Roman 
jurists. This is an original contribution by Jesus to the 
moral insight of the world. In the light of it, and by 
virtue of our grudging and partial acceptance of it, 
democracies have at last begun to exist, slavery is begin- 
ning to be abolished in fact as well as name, and the 
moral personahty of woman to be recognized in law and 
social institutions. 

Consistent with this doctrine of the greatness of man 
is the teaching of Jesus that the institution of the sab- 
bath, like all the rest of the machinery of rehgion, 
existed for man's sake, that man was lord of it and could 
dispense himself from the observance of its regulations 
whenever this was contrary to its main end. I need not 
repeat the argument briefly outlined in Chapter 11,^ 
tending to show that the words '^The son of man is lord 
also of the sabbath," mean ^'Man is lord of the sabbath." 

It is from such fragmentary teachings (which cannot 
have been invented by men who beheved the contrary) 
that one gradually discerns the true lineaments of the 
founder of Christianity. By his immediate followers he 
was misunderstood, and the misunderstanding grew 
wider and deeper in the ages that followed. Only by 
means of a minute analysis of the ancient record and a 
close discrimination between its parts can any vision of 
the truth now be attained. The critical principle, how- 
ever, by which this procedure is justified is a simple one, 
and one that cannot, I think, be invalidated: Search your 
evangelist to find out what special axe he wishes to grind. 
Having done this, examine all the sayings he records 
which are flatly contradictory of the theory he is seeking 
to prove. You then may know with certainty that he 

^ Afite, p. 19, note. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 115 

did not invent these, and that the tradition affirming their 
authenticity must in his time have been so well estab- 
lished that he dared not defy it by modifying them. 

One of the most interesting of these indisputably 
authentic traditions is the saying ascribed by Mark and 
Luke to Jesus in reply to the question of the rich young 
man, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit 
eternal Hfe? " Jesus replies, " Why callest thou me good? 
none is good save one, even God." So the incident is 
introduced by Mark, who at this point is accurately 
followed by Luke.^ Now there is no possibility of inter- 
preting the reply of Jesus otherwise than as a repudiation 
of the epithet "good," on the ground that he was not 
God, and consequently had no right to be invested with 
the attributes of God. One ancient authority reads, 
"Call thou not me good"; and this is the unmistakable 
meaning of the answer as given by Mark and Luke. 
That these words were from a very early period felt by 
the Church to be a stumbling-block is evidenced by the 
utter distortion which they have received in the first 
Gospel. Matthew or some later scribe has, with perverse 
ingenuity, worked over the question and answer as 
follows: 

And behold, one came to him and said, Master, what good 
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? And he said 
unto him. Why askest thou me concerning that which is 
good? One there is who is good: but if thou wouldst enter 
into life, keep the commandments.^ 

This Matthaean adaptation, which makes both the 
questions childish, is an example of the clumsiness with 

^ Mark x, 17 ff., Luke xviii, 18 ff. ^ Matt, xix, 16-17. 



Il6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

which it was sometimes attempted to force the early 
tradition into conformity with later doctrinal develop- 
ments. The fourth Gospel, it need scarcely be said, omits 
the incident altogether; and indeed it is remarkable that 
the original form should have been preserved in the 
second and third Gospels. The manly modesty it dis- 
plays on the part of Jesus is as incompatible with the 
notion that he claimed to be the Jewish Messiah as with 
the idea that he was consciously an incarnation of the 
personal creator of the world. Modesty does not demand 
that a man shall disclaim characteristics essential to the 
office that he bears. For example, one would not expect 
an attorney-general to say, ^'Do not call me a lawyer." 
It would have been just such bathos for one claiming 
Jewish Messiahship to say, ''Why callest thou me good? " 
So obvious is the incongruity between this saying and 
the orthodox doctrine of Christ's divinity that I doubt 
whether any theologian has ever sought to grapple with 
it. It is the habit of paraphrasts and commentators to 
dodge the problem by palpable evasions or "wres tings of 
scripture." ^ Once, anxious to read orthodox expositions 
of this passage, I searched for hours in the London 
Library to find sermons on it. I hunted through hun- 
dreds of volumes, Catholic and Protestant, dating from 
the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the 
nineteenth; but I could not find a single sermon on the 
text, "Why callest thou me good?" This is significant 
of the conspiracy of silence which has concealed the con- 

^ Witness the suggestio falsi in the scholium of Richard Baxter on 
Matt, xix, 17 (which in the version of 161 1 had the same reading as at 
Mark x, 17) : "Thou knowest not how great a word thou speakest of me, 
when thou callest me Good: Goodness is God's Name and Attribute: There 
is none Essentially, Absolutely, and most perfectly Good but God.'' — 
Baxter's Paraphrase on the New Testament, edition of 1701. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 117 

flict between the original tradition and the later doctrine 
of the Church. 

That original tradition, as preserved in and capable 
of being extracted from the Synoptic Gospels, justifies 
the following conclusions: — 

(i) That Jesus was not conscious of any difference of 
nature between himself and other men; he did not claim 
to be in any sense supernatural or supernormal. 

(2) He was a free thinker, appealing away from pre- 
scription and authority to the independent moral judg- 
ment of every man. The working maxim of his Hfe was, 
*'Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" 

(3) Whatever may have been his power over nervous 
diseases and mental disturbances, he was no miracle- 
monger. "No sign," he emphatically said, "shall be 
given to this generation." By his own testimony, the 
cures that he effected were identical in kind with those 
performed by the ordinary Jewish exorcist.^ The in- 
credibility of the mass of the miracle stories is demon- 
strated by the fact that the effect of the reputation ac- 
quired by Jesus was to make his immediate relatives 
think him insane.^ This is a curious impression to be 
produced by a man healing incurable diseases and re- 
storing lunatics to sanity. 

(4) Jesus was avowedly a disbeliever in special prov- 
idences, and a beHever in the doctrine of struggle for 
existence and survival by adaptation to enviromnental 
exigency. 

(5) He was so far from believing (with St. Augustine 

^ Matt, xii, 27: "And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, hy whom do 
your sons cast them out ? therefore shall they be your judges." 

2 Mark iii, 21: "And when his friends heard it, they went out to lay 
hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself." 



Ii8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and the Church generally) in the total depravity of 
mankind and the necessity for miraculous regeneration, 
that he was for ever insisting on the inherent capacity of 
man himself to rise to the finest heights of character and 
the truest nobility of conduct. 

(6) The doctrines of the Church concerning the unique 
nature and the supernatural functions of Jesus are 
demonstrably founded not upon the original tradition, 
but upon later accretions. This is especially the case in 
regard to the legends of his birth and resurrection. 

Thus fundamentally different is the true Jesus from the 
Christ of ecclesiastical tradition. What then is to be his 
place in the religion of the present and the future? Are 
we to say, as so many are saying in effect, with the doctor 
in Tennyson's poem, ''The good Lord Jesus has had his 
day " ? Or may we endorse the reply of the nurse, ' ' Had? 
Has it come? It has only dawned: it will come by and 
by." ^ Despite the necessary brevity of my treatment of 
the subject, I hope I have said enough to indicate and to 
justify my own conviction that the nurse's words are 
nearer to the truth than those of the blase doctor. The 
coming of the day of Jesus will not be by the conversion of 
the world to the orthodox dogmas, but by a great ethical 
and spiritual renewal. 

When men cease to follow blindly the dictates of 
custom and convention: when they are able to pierce 
through catchwords to realities: when they trust their 
independent moral judgment: when they see character 
and conduct as more real and important than the exter- 
nals of Hf e : when they are ready to Hve by and to die for 
their ideals: then his day will come. 

1 Tennyson, In the Children's Hospital. 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OF JESUS CHRIST 119 

WTien men forgive the injuries committed against 
them before presuming to ask forgiveness of their own 
ofifences: when the motive of personal gain has been 
transcended, and all men live for the sake of universal 
standards of justice, love and truth, and for the incarna- 
tion of these in the common life : when they combine the 
zest and spontaneity of childhood with the courageous 
wisdom of maturity: when they are efficiently and not 
idly good : then his day will come. 

When, through the spread of knowledge and the 
purification of motives, there shall cease to be occasion 
for divorce : when there is victory over lust and unchaste 
desire: when every Hfe that comes into the world is cer- 
tain to be welcomed, loved, cherished and respected: 
when there is neither asceticism nor excess in eating and 
drinking: when class prejudice and race distinctions and 
all uncharitableness are done away: then his day will 
come. 

When men become so fine in their moral quality that 
their very presence puts evildoers to shame (as Jesus put 
to shame the stony-hearted pedants who sought his 
judgment on the woman taken in sin) : when we have the 
authentic sign of godship that he displayed — the power 
to quicken by our personal radiance the spiritual life 
in others : then his day will come. 

When priests no longer pervert his teaching and insult 
humanity by declaring it impotent to save itself, and by 
pretending through magic to secure to men pardon and 
strength from an outside God: then his day will come. 

When monarchies and aristocracies, and all laws and 
ordinances inconsistent with the sovereignty of the 
people, are done away; when poverty and wealth no 
longer militate against the exercise of those powers of 



I20 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

service to the good of all through which alone men can 
find their personal salvation: then his day will come. 

When perfect law secures perfect liberty: when every 
man is a hght to himself and an inspiration to others: 
then his day will come. 

In the measure in which Christianity succeeded, it 
deserved to succeed, because its founder had made an 
original and indispensable contribution to the spiritual 
treasure of humanity. Not that the Christian message 
alone is sufhcient for our salvation. At vital points it 
needs to be supplemented by the wisdom and insight of 
other teachers, whom future piety will unquestionably 
place on the same plane with the prophet of Nazareth. 
Jesus is unique only in the sense in which every individual 
is unique. Each man represents an unprecedented and 
induplicable synthesis of the elements of personality. 
The claim that Jesus was different in kind from the rest 
of the human race will be abandoned. But its abandon- 
ment is a gain and not a loss, since the maintenance of 
the claim is less of an honour to him than a depressing and 
discouraging depreciation of humanity. It is a gain to 
realize that what this man was and did is an expression 
of what is possible for other men, without miraculous or 
supernatural aid. By every shining example of what man 
has achieved, men are challenged to an emulation which 
calls into action their highest powers. They are crushed, 
however, and robbed of the most effectual incentive to 
self-regeneration, by the doctrine that true goodness and 
true wisdom are ahen to human nature and can only be 
injected into it from without by a special operation of 
transcendent grace. If Jesus was right in that inter- 
pretation of humanity which he set forth in his tales of 
the Publican and the Prodigal Son, we need no myths and 



THE RE-DISCOVERY OE JESUS CHRIST 1 21 

legends to account for the manifestation of goodness and 
greatness by human beings, since these are the attributes 
of every man's true self. Rather, as I have elsewhere 
remarked, it is declensions from this standard that need 
to be accounted for.^ 

The piety which is consistent with free rationality and 
with the moral autonomy of mankind, will not seek to 
express its reverence for Jesus by imitation of the out- 
ward incidents of his career. The notion of ''the imita- 
tion of Christ" has in it something of slavishness. The 
worthy following of any great leader consists in acting 
from his principles and in his spirit; and, as we have seen, 
the cardinal principle with Jesus was the defiance of 
precedent and the bringing of independent and untram- 
melled moral judgment to bear upon the circumstances 
that confronted him. He acted instinctively upon Kant's 
principle, that ''Imitation has no place in morals." We 
can never transcend his rule of mutuality and his rever- 
ence for the unconditional worth of every human soul. 
But, seeing that the circumstances in which ethical 
principles have to be applied are always different, we 
may not govern the moral Hfe by precedent. If we do, 
we fall short both of the demand of conscience and of the 
example of Jesus. Since he imitated nobody, the only 
true loyalty to him is to be original and to abstain from 
imitating even him. We must not abdicate the sover- 
eignty that he ascribes to us in bidding us judge for our- 
selves what is right. The ordinary Christian practice of 
looking to Jesus is inconsistent with this demand. Rather 
we should look with him, first to the sources of spiritual 
strength and moral insight, and then at the world of facts, 
which challenges us to redemptive labour by reason of its 

^ See my Criticisms of Life, p. 157. (Houghton, Mifflin: 1915.) 



122 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

clash with those righteous laws which are the structural 
principles of our nature. 

The true resurrection of Jesus consists in the appropria- 
tion of his long-forgotten spirit and principles. Just as 
the spirit of Aristotle has risen again from the dead in the 
minds and wills, the purpose and method of our modern 
men of science, so that of Jesus is rising again among 
those who are seeking to establish a reign of righteous- 
ness based on the principles of democracy and freedom of 
thought. This is the real meaning of the hackneyed say- 
ing that there is more true Christianity outside the 
Churches than within them. Within the Churches we too 
often find the very temper against which his life was a 
protest: the temper of authoritarianism, of distrust of 
human nature, and of superstitious faith in the overruling 
of the natural order to moral ends by a power external to 
humanity. Yet even into the Churches the spirit of 
Jesus, risen again in the innovators, the free thinkers, and 
the social idealists of the modern world, is returning. 
Thus we look not in vain for the resurrection of the dead, 
and for the life of the world to come — by virtue of that 
resurrection. It is in the very spirit of Jesus that the 
trammels of the enslaving doctrine which has hitherto 
borne his name are being burst. The world is reaching 
forward to a new religious synthesis, in which, for the 
first time, the life-giving principles which he taught will 
bear their legitimate fruits, and demonstrate their af- 
finity with the good which has come to us through other 
movements of the human spirit than that which orig- 
inated with him. 



CHAPTER V 

THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 

In the preceding chapters I have advanced the view 
that one of the chief developments of reHgion will con- 
sist in placing other personahties on the plane with 
Jesus Christ. This does not mean that he will be rele- 
gated from the first place to an inferior one, but it does 
mean that he will cease to be regarded as the monopolist 
of the supreme rehgious function of saviour. I would 
not seek to disguise from the reader how intensely radical 
is the revolution involved in this change of attitude. As 
compared with it, all the modifications introduced of late 
years into the Churches are insignificant. Theological 
liberaHsm has thus far consisted in the abandonment of a 
number of dogmas and in a freer interpretation of those 
retained; but not in any Church has there yet been a 
conscious and deliberate placing of other men in the same 
category with Jesus. 

It has been maintained by some thinkers that the 
Church cannot evolve beyond the point of exclusive 
devotion to the personahty of Christ. According to these 
critics, if the Church ceased to be Christocentric, it 
would lose its identity. This opinion seems to me 
groundless. I hold that the Church could modify its 
view of the nature and offices of Christ, and could come 
to regard human salvation as the work of many persons 
instead of one, without making such a breach with the 
past as to destroy its identity and continuity. Whether 

123 



124 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

it will be able in practice to effect this change remains to 
be seen. My present contention is that the change is 
desirable and theoretically possible. A nation does not 
lose its identity when it changes its form of government. 
It can swing from monarchy to republicanism, from 
aristocracy to democracy, and still remain the same 
nation, the same State. I maintain that in religion we 
can similarly change from the monarchical to the demo- 
cratic conception of God; and it is precisely this change 
which is involved in extending the idea of salvation in 
such wise that not only one, but many persons shall be 
recognized as having made essential contributions to it. 

While it will be hotly disputed whether others than 
Jesus Christ may be looked upon as saviours, it for- 
tunately happens that we can agree as to what salvation 
is. It will be admitted that the saved man is he who has 
undergone an inward renewal of heart and will. The 
attainment of virtuous character and its expression in 
righteous conduct is salvation. The truly saved man is 
he who has lost his self -regarding life and has found a Kfe 
that beats in unison with impersonal and universal good. 
He who no longer mistakes the material goods of the 
world, which are but means, for the end of life; he who 
lives in disinterested principles and benevolent purposes 
that embrace the entire life of the universe, is the man 
who has found salvation. 

That this inward renewal is the essence of redemption 
will not be denied even by those who assert that the 
attainment of endless Kfe and feHcity is a necessary con- 
comitant of the process. For that felicity itself is held to 
consist in the complete harmonization of the finite will of 
man with the infinite and perfectly good will of God. The 
anticipated happiness of the immortal life is a result of 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 125 

salvation; but the salvation consists in something other 
than happiness. The beatified spirit is happy because it 
is saved, not saved because it is happy. The Christian 
idea is not merely hedonistic, however widespread may 
be the popular misunderstanding that regards it as such. 
Christ's purpose was to quicken in men a vital and 
original seed of the spiritual life, capable of fructifying 
in them and communicating itself from them to others. 
It is a vulgarization of this idea to represent it as designed 
merely to ensure happiness. Rather its purpose is to 
produce a loyalty and an enthusiasm which shall make 
men capable of forgoing happiness. The typical Chris- 
tian is not the ecstatically happy Salvationist, but the 
martyr, whose spiritual life is so deep, so real, and so 
serene that he counts misery and frustration insignificant, 
and is willing to embrace the stake or the cross. To 
speak of him as happy involves a somewhat degrading use 
of that ambiguous term. He is fully conscious of the 
bitterness of the cup, which he prays may pass from him; 
but his salvation is testified by his willingness to drink 
it to the dregs. 

It is further admitted on all hands that that qualitative 
change in which salvation consists may be undergone in 
the present life. Protestant Christianity, indeed, insists 
that it must be — that unless a m^an be saved on earth he 
is lost for ever. The Roman purgatorian doctrine, hu- 
maner in spirit, has been morally laxer in practice. Even 
it, however, fully admits the possibility of complete 
salvation during the earthly lifetime. By the consent, 
then, of all Christians, men are quickened here and now 
into that type of character which is the highest thing 
that could be attained even in an immortal existence. 
It is also conceded that the entire machinery of Chris- 



126 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

tianity exists for the purpose of producing this effect in 
men. Must it not then be acknowledged that whoever 
contributes to this change any indispensable element is to 
that extent a saviour? If, independently of the Christian 
tradition, any man undergoes a transformation identical 
in its ethical results with that which Christianity effects, 
it cannot be denied that the change is a salvation, and the 
person responsible for it a saviour. Things which are 
equal to the same thing are equal to each other. 

As one instance of the change of standpoint which I 
anticipate in religion, I shall outline here the new recogni- 
tion which should be given to the personality and work of 
Socrates. My contention is that he has bequeathed to 
mankind a spirit and example, a ''method and secret," 
which form a necessary part of human salvation. He 
stands for the elaborate development of a principle which 
is indeed embodied in the original Christian teaching, but 
which is there so little stressed that it has been possible 
for the historic religious bodies to ignore it and to act for 
centuries in defiance of it. That principle is intellectual 
honesty. Socrates Hved and died for freedom and fulness 
of thought. He convicted men of intellectual sin, just as 
Jesus convicted them of moral sin. No less than Jesus, he 
considered himself the emissary of a power greater than 
himself; and he had the same high sense of responsibility 
for the sacred mission entrusted to him. Like Jesus, he 
lived in poverty, was condemned as a blasphemer, and 
died a martyr's death. His spirit, like that of Jesus, was 
speedily eclipsed, and is only now rising into newness of 
life. 

The validity of his title to rank as a saviour is estab- 
lished, in the first place, by his effect upon the char- 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 127 

acters of those with whom he was personally associated. 
Just as one cannot explain St. Paul without Jesus, so one 
cannot explain the reverence of Plato and Xenophon for 
Socrates without beheving their accounts of his exalted 
character. The impression which he produced upon the 
greatest and ablest men of his time is unmistakable and 
immeasurable. It is further duplicated in the effect 
which to this day and to all future time he is capable of 
exercising upon all who come into contact with his spirit 
as it Uves and communicates itself through the writings of 
Xenophon and Plato. No reader of the Apology can 
doubt the proud contention of Socrates, that instead of 
being a corrupter of young men, he had been the very 
opposite; he had saved many from corruption, and had 
been the only restraining influence upon some who, after 
leaving him, went to the bad. With Socrates as with 
Jesus, one feels that the spirit is greater than the letter, 
the life more than the doctrine. We are at once abashed 
and exalted by the spiritual grandeur of these men; what 
they are is more than what they say and do. 

Of the life of Socrates we have more reliable details 
than in the case of Jesus. It is reasonably certain that 
he was born in the year 470 or 469 B. C, his father 
Sophroniscus being a sculptor, his mother Phaenarete a 
midwife. Tradition has it that he worked at his father's 
trade, though there seems no reliable basis for the state- 
ment, made centuries later by Pausanias, that a group of 
the Graces at the entrance of the Acropohs was his 
handiwork. In the usual Athenian fashion he learned 
music, gymnastic, geometry, and astronomy. He was 
early familiar with the philosophy and the physical 
speculations current in his time, but he soon gave up the 
habit of guessing at the secrets of the external world, 



128 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

since he considered self-knowledge of the first importance. 
He served as a soldier in three campaigns, — at Potidaea 
in the years from 432 to 429, at Delium in 424, and at 
Amphipolis in 422. Plato has recorded many anecdotes 
of his courage and his extraordinary physical hardihood.^ 
To his personal ugliness we have not only the witness of 
the traditional bust, but the anecdotes of his contem- 
poraries 2 and his own witty references to himself. It 
seems probable that he was unhappily married, though 
the gossip about Xanthippe is unauthenticated. He 
beHeved himself to be divinely inspired. Many are the 
references to the ''daimon" by which at all important 
crises of his life he was prompted. It is related that on 
one occasion he remained for twenty-four hours sunk in 

1 "We messed together, and I had the opportunity of observing his 
extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue and going without food when 
our supplies were intercepted in any place, as will happen with an army. 
In the faculty of endurance he was superior not only to me but to every- 
body; there was no one to be compared to him. Yet at a festival he was 
the only person who had any real powers of enjoyment, and though not 
willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us all at that; and the most 
wonderful thing of all was that no human being had ever seen Socrates 
drunk. . . . His endurance of cold was also surprising. There was a 
severe frost, for the winter in that region was really tremendous, and 
everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out had on no 
end of clothing, and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felts 
and fleeces: in the midst of this, Socrates, with his bare feet on the ice, 
and in his ordinary dress, marched better than any of the other soldiers 
who had their shoes on, and they looked daggers at him because he 
seemed to despise them." — Alcibiades, in the Symposium. See also 
Apology 28-29, Laches 181, and Charmides i. 

^ "He is exactly like the masks of Silenus, which may be seen sitting 
in the statuaries' shops, having pipes and flutes in their mouths; and they 
are made to open in the middle, and there are images of gods inside them. 
I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You will not deny, Socrates, 
that your face is like that of a satyr." — Symposium 215. See also the 
witty dialogue between Socrates and Critobulus in Xenophon's Ban- 
quet, § 5. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 129 

meditation and obli\aous to the outer world. ^ In the 
closing portion of the speech at his trial he argues that 
his condemnation will certainly be a good, because the 
famihar oracle, which had often dissuaded him from some 
contemplated course, had set up no opposition to the very 
uncondliatory speech he had planned to make to his 
judges.^ 

Though he lived to be seventy years of age, there 
was to the end no decline in his extraordinary mental 
powers. How far the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo 
are historical we cannot definitely say, but from the 
general correspondence between Plato's and Xenophon's 
accounts of the trial, it is clear that the Apology 
faithfully presents the main lines of his defence. The 
chief point of the Crito is in Hke manner borne out 
by Xenophon, who tells us that ^'when his friends would 
have withdrawn him privately, he would not consent, but 
asked them with a smile if they knew of any place beyond 
the borders of Attica where death could not approach 
him." Xenophon also relates another anecdote showing 
the imperturbable magnanimity with which Socrates met 
his fate : 

Apollodorus . . . said to him, "But it grieves me, Socrates, 
to have you die so unjustly." Socrates, with much tender- 
ness, laying his hand upon his head, answered smiling, '' What, 
my much-loved Apollodorus, would you rather they had con- 
demned me justly?" ' 

1 Symposium 220. 

2 "The oracle made no sign of opposition, either as I was leaving my 
house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this 
Court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and 
yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in 
nothing I either said or did touching this matter has the oracle opposed 
me." — Apology 40. ' The Defence of Socrates. 



I30 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Between the picture of Socrates by Xenophon and that 
by Plato there is a difference analogous to that which dis- 
tinguishes the Synoptic from the Johannine picture of 
Jesus. Many of the Platonic Dialogues were written 
long years after the master's death, and into his mouth 
Plato has certainly put many expressions of his own 
maturer thought. Yet it cannot be doubted that the 
superior intellectual powers of Plato rendered him a much 
more competent interpreter of Socrates than the plain 
blunt Xenophon. The important thing is not the exact 
separation of the Socratic from the Platonic elements, 
which indeed is impossible, but the fact that the entire 
inspiration of Plato came from Socrates, without whom 
we should have had neither the Platonic Dialogues nor 
the philosophy of Aristotle. 

Another point of resemblance between Socrates and 
Jesus is found in the fact that Socrates, too, was a poor 
man of humble origin. This, however, did not hinder 
him from receiving an education equal to that of the 
aristocratic class. In the intellectual democracy of 
Athens education effectively bridged social distinctions; 
and we find that Plato, like most of the companions and 
disciples of Socrates, was of patrician Hneage. Socrates 
seems never to have written anything. At all events, 
nothing from his pen has come down to us. His life was 
one of voluntary poverty. Both Xenophon and Plato 
testify that handsome pecuniary offers were made to 
him, but that he always refused them. Indeed, he 
frequently sneers at the Sophists on the ground that they 
accepted fees for their teaching. His irony leads him to 
explain the matter by saying that, as he knew nothing, he 
could teach nothing, and consequently could not earn a 
fee; whereas the Sophists believed that they had real 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 131 

knowledge of great value to communicate, and therefore 
were entitled to monetary rewards. They were of course 
mistaken; but as their pupils shared their error, the 
payments were given and received in good faith. Soc- 
rates always refused to stand for public office. He 
thought that if by his teaching he could raise up a line of 
able statesmen, he would thus render a better service to 
the State than by giving his own life to political work. 

The character of Socrates is nowhere more charmingly 
manifested than in his ironical account of that Delphic 
oracle which had proclaimed him the wisest of men. 
His friend Chaerephon reported this oracle to him; and 
Socrates, knowing, as he said, that he knew nothing, set 
himself to discover what the god could possibly mean. 
He went from one renowned philosopher to another, and 
discovered by cross-examination that these men were 
really without knowledge. At last, with genuine modesty 
as well as with irony, he concluded that because he was 
aware of his ignorance, he therefore was wiser than those 
who erroneously imagined themselves to know some- 
thing.^ 

His attack upon the influence of the Sophists was of 
immense value as a stimulus to thought. The difference 
between him and them was perhaps less complete than 
he imagined, though no doubt it was a vulgar mis- 
representation to identify him with them, as Aristo- 
phanes did in his comedy of The Clouds. Many times 
his reasoning, as reported by Plato and Xenophon, is 
as fallacious as theirs can have been; but there was the 
fundamental difference that he always insisted upon 
distinguishing between knowledge and assumption. He 
had, moreover, completely abandoned physical specula- 
^ Apology 22-23. 



132 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

tions, on the ground that the trees had nothing to teach 
him.^ Nothing could be more delightful or more merci- 
less than his chaff of the Sophists.^ 

The basis of the charge that he was a corrupter of 
youth lay in the limitless influence which he certainly 
exercised over the younger men. They regarded him 
with spell-bound admiration, and were always eager to 
drink in his words. There can be no doubt that his 
influence was essentially good and elevating. The trouble 
was, however, that these young men were much more 
willing to obey him than their parents; and this probably 
led to many a heated scene. One can imagine the 
virtuous indignation of elderly Athenian gentlemen when 
their sons subjected their commands to the merciless 
scrutiny of the Socratic dialectic, and worked off on 
their grave and reverend seniors that demonstration of 
complete ignorance which Socrates had first made to 
them. 

The other count in the indictment was a somewhat 
confused accusation of atheism and of introducing 
strange gods. Socrates had no difficulty in demonstrating 
the muddle-headedness of Meletus in seeking to charge 
him with both offences at once; but we can easily see how 
such an accusation could be more convincing to the 
Athenian laity than the very rational defence set up by 
the accused. In order to destroy the Sophistic scepticism, 
Socrates had systematically driven the doubts far deeper 
than the Sophists had done. He was, moreover, an 
extremely formidable critic of the orthodox religion of his 

1 "I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are 
my teachers, and not the trees or the country." — Phaedrus 230. 

^ Meno 71, 76; Euthydemus 272 ff.; Gorgias, passim; Republic (in the 
character of Thrasymachus, &c,); and elsewhere. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 133 

time. Witness the long passages in the Republic in 
which he accuses Homer and Hesiod of blasphemy on 
account of the degrading anecdotes of the gods which 
they retailed. We can perceive that he was an intensely 
religious man, with a far deeper reverence for truth and 
goodness (which are essential deity) than any of his 
contemporaries. 

But the charge of atheism on the lips of the vulgar 
never proves that those who are accused are really god- 
less. It only proves that they have a conception of 
God which is beyond the comprehension of their critics. 
The '^ atheism" of Socrates consisted in his assertion that 
nothing is to be taught concerning God which represents 
God as other than good.^ The application of such a 
principle made a clean sweep of most of the reHgious 
legends of the Athenians, Just as it will of the great bulk 
of the doctrines which orthodox people for the last 
fifteen hundred years have mistaken for Christianity. 
This was the blasphemy of Socrates, — this and his un- 
flinching analysis of the current ethical ideas. Nor was 
the indictment upon which he was condemned a new and 
hastily trumped-up one, since substantially the same 

^ "God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many 
assert, but he is the cause of a few things only, and not of most things 
that occur to men; for few are the goods of human life, and many are 
the evils, and the good only is to be attributed to him: of the evil, 
other causes have to be discovered. . . . 

"And if anyone asserts that the violation of oaths and treaties of 
which Pandarus was the real author, was brought about by Athene and 
Zeus, or that the strife and conflict of the gods was instigated by Themis 
and Zeus, he shall not have our approval; neither will we allow our 
young men to hear the words of ^schylus, when he says that ' God plants 
guilt among men when he desires utterly to destroy a house.' . . . 

"Let this, then, be one of the rules of recitation and invention, — 
that God is not the author of evil, but of good only." — Republic, Book ii, 
§379- 



134 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

charges had been brought against him twenty-four years 
earher by Aristophanes. 

Let us pause to note how far-reaching is the principle 
laid down by Socrates in the passages to which I have 
referred. It not only destroys a vast proportion of the 
received teaching about God, both in popular Greek and 
in popular Christian thought, but it also makes the 
conscience of man the supreme authority upon all ques- 
tions of religion. For who is to determine what is good? 
The answer of Socrates would be that the individual 
thinker, using his own judgment and thinking out the 
entire question fully and fairly, can alone be the judge. 
The principle of authority, as applied in Judaism and 
in the Roman and Protestant Churches, is dynamited by 
this ethical doctrine of the great Athenian. The principle 
commonly accepted, — namely, that everything is to be 
received as good which authority declares to have been 
done or commanded by God, — finds in the Socratic 
doctrine its polar antithesis. The law hidden in the 
spirit of man is to be the supreme judge both of men and 
of gods. 

The authoritarian principle has been throughout 
history the great perverter of religion and moral judg- 
ment. It has forced men to approve of doctrines and 
acts flagrantly contradictory to the intuitions of the 
unsophisticated conscience. Christendom has been fun- 
damentally degraded by the idolatrous idea that what- 
ever is recorded of God in the Bible is true, and is neces- 
sarily good. This is essentially the principle maintained 
in the nineteenth century by Dean Mansel, and opposed, 
in the very spirit of Socrates, by John Stuart Mill. 
Mansel maintained that the goodness of God, being 
infinite, was probably different in kind from goodness as 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 135 

understood and practised by men. To this suicidal 
position he was driven by the necessity of justifying the 
received Christian theology, with its ideas of blood atone- 
ment, substitutionary righteousness, everlasting tor- 
ment, and the Uke. Mill, in refuting this doctrine, ex- 
pressed himself in the following terms: 

Here, then, I take my stand on the acknowledged principle 
of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things 
we have no right to call them by the same name, and to 
apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. 
Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, Bene- 
volent, save that in which we predicate them of our fellow- 
creatures; and unless that is what we intend to express by 
them, we have no business to employ the words. If in affirm- 
ing them of God we do not mean to affirm these very qualities, 
differing only as greater in degree, we are neither philosoph- 
ically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. ... If in 
ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by 
goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some 
knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incom- 
prehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a 
totally different quality from that which I love and venerate — 
and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed, be in some 
important particulars opposed to this — what do I mean by 
calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating 
it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot 
tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that 
God's goodness may be different in kind from man's good- 
ness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, 
that God may possibly not be good? . . . 

If, instead of the "glad tidings" that there exists a Being 
in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind 
can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am in- 
formed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes 



136 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are 
the principles of his government, except that "the highest 
human morality which we are capable of conceiving" does 
not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate 
as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and 
at the same time call this being by the names which express 
and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms 
that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have 
over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall 
not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who 
is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow- 
creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not 
so calling him, to hell I will go.i 

This is the only principle which can prevent religion 
from becoming a system of superstition enforced by 
terrorization. It implies the essential identity of man 
with God, in the sense that there is and can be nothing 
higher than the conscience of humanity when disinter- 
ested and fully enlightened. We owe to Socrates the 
first clear and unmistakable enunciation of this doctrine. 
It is intensely depressing to reflect on the enormous 
difference which its acceptance would have made to the 
course of history from the fourth century B. C. down to 
the twentieth century of the Christian era. The bar- 
barous forcings of conscience, the insistence on salvation 
through correctness of theological belief, the bloody wars 
of religion, the inhuman burning and torturing of her- 
etics, would have been rendered impossible if men had 
only stood upon the simple principle that, since God is 
goodness, nothing evil can possibly have been done or 
commanded by him. And if at last we accept from 

^ J. S. MiU, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 
pp. 127-29. (Fourth edition, London: Longmans, 1872.) 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 137 

Socrates this doctrine, and apply it as the regulative 
principle of our faith, we shall eflectually estabhsh the 
spiritual freedom and responsibility of man. We shall 
not destroy authority, but we shall see it where alone it 
can truly be found. It will involve the abandonment of 
the notion that God is infinite and omnipotent; but, at 
the same time, and for that very reason, it v/ill destroy 
the artificial theological notion of evil, a notion which 
creates an insoluble contradiction by representing a per- 
fectly good will as the source both of evil and of good. 

In his analysis of the contribution made to human 
salvation by Jesus Christ, Matthew Arnold explains the 
power of Jesus as consisting in a method and a secret. 
The secret is that of inwardness; the method is that of 
self-renunciation. But Arnold was for the most part 
oblivious of that great crux of the moral Hfe which so 
constantly forced itself upon the attention of Socrates. 
Arnold seems to have thought that if once the will were 
purified by self-renunciation and earnestly engaged in the 
cause of righteousness, its difficulties would end. He 
held that to the man of good will the content of the 
moral law is self-evident. He contends that it is not 
difficult to see what is right, but only to do it.^ 

This, however, is one of the disastrous practical mis- 
takes which have played so tragic a part in Christian 
history. We are realizing to-day more than ever before 
that frequently it is even more difficult to decide what 

* "Conduct is really, however men may overlay it with philosophical 
disquisitions, the simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it is the 
simplest thing in the world so far as understanding is concerned; as 
regards doing, it is the hardest thing in the world. Here is the difficulty, — 
to do what we very well know ought to be done." — Literature and Dogma, 
chap. i. 



138 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

is right than to act rightly. There is in this respect a 
strange and saddening difference between the way in 
which the world advances intellectually and that in which 
it advances ethically. Every student of the physical 
sciences can start from the point reached by all his 
predecessors, and can avail himself of the full store of 
their garnered knowledge and experience. He is not 
obliged to repeat the experiments and the errors of men 
of centuries ago. His methods have been elaborated for 
him by the accumulated work of ages, and he inherits a 
mass of received and tested truth, upon the basis of which 
he can proceed in his quest for further knowledge. In 
practical morality, on the other hand, there is no such 
utilization of the experience of the race. Each new 
generation buys its wisdom by the same tragic and costly 
method of trial and error as all that have preceded. The 
hard-won discoveries of mankind as to the ways that 
lead to life and those that lead to death cannot be made 
convincing and coercive to the judgment as can the 
truths of physical and mathematical science. Now, one 
main reason for this state of things is the fact that we 
have scarcely begun to apply the scientific method to the 
demonstration of the empirical truths that relate to moral 
practice. 

It is here that we most need to supplement the method 
and secret of Jesus by the method and secret of Socrates. 
Not, indeed, that we are to accept as completely true 
the Socratic ethical theory. There is in the Christian 
tradition an indispensable truth which Socrates ignored; 
but also there is in the Socratic teaching an indispensable 
truth which is almost omitted from the New Testament, 
and which has been completely overlooked in the doc- 
trine and practice of the Christian Church. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCR.^TES 139 

The secret of Socrates (if one may continue to use the 
convenient terminology of Arnold) is the doctrine of the 
identity of virtue ^vith true knowledge.^ His method is 
to convict men of intellectual sin, by exposing their false 
conceit of wisdom, and by forcing them to confess that 
what they had taken for knowledge was really ignorance 
and baseless assumption. He maintained that if any 
man really knew what was good, he could not do any- 
thing that conflicted with it. Socrates does not mean by 
this merely to endorse the platitude of common prudence, 
that a man will not act against his own interest. He goes 
further. He conceives of good or right as a single and 
indivisible reality, and does not draw the common dis- 
tinction between a man's own interest and the interest of 
others or of all. 

In order justly to understand this doctrine, we must 
constantly remember that Socrates is not a materialist, 
and is not entangled in that ethical heresy and idolatry 
which imagines that the good of man consists in the 
things that he possesses. To identify the good with 
virtue and virtue with knowledge is to define the good as 
spiritual, and as qualitative, not quantitative. The good 
is a disposition of the mind and will, a quality of char- 
acter, and a state of consciousness resulting therefrom. 
Certainly there is a physical organism through which the 
soul of man must function, and everything necessary to 

^ The essence of the Socratic doctrine is well expressed by Richard 
Hooker: "There was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not 
preferred before a greater, and that wilfully; which cannot be done 
without the singular disgrace of nature, and the utter disturbance of 
that divine order, whereby the pre-eminence of chiefest acceptation is 
by the best things worthily challenged. There is not that good which 
concemeth us, but it hath evidence enough for itself, if Reason were 
dihgent to search it out." — Ecclesiastical Polity, Book i, § 8. 



I40 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

the maintenance and efficiency of that organism is an 
indispensable auxiliary to the attainment of the good. 
Material possessions are therefore not to be despised, nor 
is poverty to be exalted as desirable. The wise Hooker 
again furnishes us with a perfect statement of the case: 

Inasmuch as righteous life presuppose th Hfe; inasmuch as 
to live virtuously it is impossible except we live; therefore 
the first impediment, which naturally we endeavour to re- 
move, is penury and want of things without which we cannot 
live.i 

The point to be remembered, however, is that all posses- 
sions and all wealth are merely possible auxiliaries of the 
good; they are never good in themselves. Even in the 
most beautiful works of art, what is good is not the 
material substance but the spiritual impress which they 
bear and communicate. In so far as they incarnate their 
creators they are good, because they are thus effective 
means to the creation of an analogous good in the minds 
of those who behold and use them. All separation of 
good from the spirit, all ascription of worth to anything 
other than spiritual qualities, is at once erroneous and 
dangerous. Ruskin reaffirmed this doctrine (which he 
had learned both from Socrates and from Jesus) when 
he asserted that there is no wealth but life. Money, and 
that wealth of which money is a measure and to which it 
constitutes a transferable title, is but a means to an 
end. Money in itself can be neither good nor evil. Only 
the end, which is the spiritual condition of rational agents, 
can possess any ethical or anti-ethical quality. 

It is in this sense that Socrates is able to beheve in the 
unity of the good. He ignores the clash between the good 
^ Ecclesiastical Polity, Book i, § x. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 141 

of one and the good of all, because, from his point of 
view, that clash does not exist. The opposition is tran- 
scended. If we think of good as consisting in houses and 
lands, in metals and jewels, and in the currencies by 
which these things are appraised and transferred, there 
may be an endless conflict between the interests of men. 
But if we accept the principle that the good does not 
and cannot consist in externals, we then see that the 
conflict over them is not a conflict of goods. If the good 
be the perfection of the spiritual nature of man, then, 
since all men share the same nature, they must be capable 
of experiencing the one indivisible good. What is truly 
and essentially good for me must, by the force of the 
terms, be good also for you and for all rational agents. ^- 

This is the presupposition of all the ethical reasoning of 
Socrates. That quality of mind and character which 
alone is good is for him an attainable reahty. It is of 
such nature that its claim to be considered good becomes 
self-evident to every man the moment he adequately con- 
ceives it. It is inherently and intrinsically preferable to 
all else; to know it is to desire it, with all the force of the 
soul's spontaneous love. It destroys the attractive 
power of all its rivals, as the rising sun puts the stars to 
flight. We believe in the possibility of a conflict of goods 
only because we are not enlightened as to the true nature 
and unity of the good. 

It is impossible to use concerning the good, as Socrates 
conceived it, language adequate to the exaltation of his 
thought. Nor can one too emphatically insist that this 
intensity of appreciation was no sentimental preference 
of his. It was in the deepest sense a rational conviction, 
arrived at and justified by way of the fullest debate with 
all opposing doctrines. Among the many "modern" 



142 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

ideas with which the Republic abounds, nothing is more 
conspicuous than the complete anticipation of that 
widespread doctrine which identifies morahty with the 
self-interested conventions of a slave class. Thrasym- 
achus and Glaucon are permitted to develop this thesis 
to the uttermost. So, too, is Callicles in the Gorgias. 
It is after taking full account of it, — after knowing all 
that can be said in the strongest terms against his own 
position, — that Socrates reaches the magnificent heights 
of ethical certitude which give such persuasive dignity 
to the closing books of the Republic. He does not 
always refute the anti-ethical position of the supermen 
by direct argumentation. Rather he leads them on, 
by a gradual disclosure of his thought on other subjects, 
and by engaging their minds in new aspects of the theme, 
to the point where suddenly their eyes are opened to the 
inherent nobility of real virtue, and to the fact that it is 
demanded by the ultimate law of their own being. Im- 
mediately this vision is caught, all the sophistry of the 
individuahstic will-to-power school falls away of itself. 
The ultimate anchorage of the moral law is the fact that 
it is what the nature of man spontaneously wills as soon 
as it understands itself. 

This central conviction of Socrates accounts for the 
unique importance ascribed in his system to right educa- 
tion. The high and solemn dedication of his philosopher- 
rulers to their Hfe work ^ finds its explanation in the 
imperative need that before they assume their functions 
in the commonwealth their eyes shall be opened to the 
divine vision, and their minds trained to a just apprecia- 
tion of the scale of human values. They must know 
what is the paramount and essential good attainable by 
^ See Books iii, iv and v of the Republic. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 143 

humanity, in order that they may administer the affairs 
of the State in accordance with sound principles, and 
secure to all its inhabitants the highest measure of true 
good (as distinguished from mere wealth or happiness) 
which they are capable of achieving. The same central 
conception explains the Socratic insistence that education 
is something more than a knowledge of facts. It is the 
path to essential beauty, to \drtue, and to the divine. 
Since the real is to be sought in the sphere of ideas, the 
world of fact becomes a mere s>Tnbol and illustration of 
these intangible and super-sensible realities.^ Thus all 
real knowledge is of the nature of intuition or inspiration,^ 
which may ensue upon the process of laborious study, but 
is not ensured by it and does not follow from it by logical 
necessity. 

Such a conception of knowledge and of the knowable 
explains the overwhelming enthusiasm with which 
Socrates devoted himself to his mission of exposing the 
false conceit of wisdom. For him all sin was ignorance, 
and all ignorance sin. His conception of virtue is ex- 
pressed with literal exactness in the majestic and exalted 
language of one of the Church's invocations of God: 
''In knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life: whose 
service is perfect freedom." It was because he held this 
belief with an inexpressible intensity of conviction and 
realization that he chose a Hfe of voluntary poverty and 
underwent a martyr's death for the sake of convicting 
men of that sin which blinded them to the perfect good. 

He does not make a formal classification of the inward 
obstacles to knowledge, but throughout his teaching is 

1 See closing sections of Book vi, and opening section of Book vii of 
the Republic. 

2 See below, chapter vi. v ^ *^ 



144 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

implied his consciousness of the four great sources of 
error which Bacon calls the idols of the tribe, the idols of 
the cave, the idols of the market-place, and the idols of 
the theatre. Remembering the extent to which he was 
occupied in refuting the fallacies and unfounded assump- 
tions of what passed for philosophies, we cannot doubt 
that he would have endorsed most heartily the statement 
of Bacon concerning these: — 

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's 
minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also 
from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the 
Theatre; because in my judgment all the received systems 
are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own 
creation after an unreal and scenic fashion. Nor is it only 
of the systems now in vogue, or only of the ancient sects and 
philosophies, that I speak; for many more plays of the same 
kind may yet be composed and in like artificial manner set 
forth; seeing that errors the most widely different have 
nevertheless causes for the most part alike. Neither again 
do I mean this only of entire systems, but also of many 
principles and axioms in science, which by tradition, credulity 
and negligence have come to be received.^ 

The explanation of the failure of Socrates to recognize 
the possibility of wilful wrong-doing, of what we call 
sinning against the light, is to be found in the extraor- 
dinary force of his own character. It was the very 
strength of the man that caused the weakness of his doc- 
trine. He seems to have been endowed by nature with 
a fortitude of the spirit that was of a piece with the 
bodily hardihood ascribed to him by Alcibiades. By iron 
discipline, continued through life, he had become able to 
^ Novum Organum, Aphorism xliv. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 145 

do effortlessly and habitually what others could do only 
rarely and with difficulty, or not at all. For him, to know 
what was right was to be able to do it. It was not that he 
was immune by nature from temptation. On the con- 
trary, in some respects, if we may believe Plato, he had 
in his youth been specially subject to the promptings 
of desire for several of the pleasures of the senses. But 
his inborn love for philosophy had enabled him to master 
these, and thus to turn what might have been besetting 
sins into besetting virtues. 

Rationalist as he was, his rationalistic procedure was 
prompted by an intuition, involving an unshakable faith 
in an indemonstrable doctrine. That ultimate good 
which he identified with knowledge, and against which 
he could not imagine any man deliberately acting, was 
indefinable. "He could give," says Sidgwick,^ "no 
account that satisfied him of good in the abstract." The 
reality of the good, and its identity with beauty and with 
truth, were for him presuppositions, not conclusions; or 
rather we may say that they were truths which, being 
self-evident, needed no demonstration. Since his own 
natural and acquired firmness of purpose enabled him 
always to tread the path marked out by conviction, he 
failed to allow for the fact that with other men there is a 
terrific and often insuperable obstacle to the doing of 
what is seen to be right. St. Paul was always bitterly 
conscious of this difficulty, and the whole of his energy 
was directed to overcoming it. It was his keen sense of 
the "war in our members," and of the spontaneous 
tendency to do what is admitted to be wrong, which in- 
spired his unbounded gratitude to Jesus Christ, who for 
him had supplied the strength necessary to overcome 
^ History oj Ethics, p. 37. 



T46 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

the wayward impulse. The shortcoming of Socrates is 
that, having himself been able, without the expulsive 
power of a personal affection, to eradicate the weakness 
that would have beguiled his feet from the paths of 
known duty, he did not realize the necessity for providing 
others with a dynamic to reinforce their insufficient 
powers in this direction. 

For an instance of the method of Socrates which is not 
only illuminating, but has the added advantage of being 
in all probability authentic, we cannot do better than 
turn to Xenophon's record of a certain dialogue with 
Euthydemus.^ In the Platonic composition of that title 
we cannot be sure whether we are Kstening to Socrates 
or to Plato. Its irony is almost more marked than that 
of any of the other Dialogues, and it is presumably not so 
much the actual memory of conversations with Euthy- 
demus which inspires Plato as the purpose of kilHng 
with satire the eristic method. Plato was certainly equal 
to the invention of all that his Euthydemus contains. 
The limitations of Xenophon, on the other hand, con- 
stitute our best guarantee that he did not invent what 
he records of the dealings of Socrates with that noble 
youth, and accordingly we may the more securely rely 
upon the probable genuineness of what he offers us. 

Euthydemus was a handsome young Athenian gentle- 
man, of considerable attainments, who had formed a 
collection of the writings of many poets and sophists, 
imagining that he was thereby surpassing the accomplish- 
ments of his contemporaries. He intended to devote 
himself to public affairs. It was his manner, however, 
not to seek any instruction from other men, but by his 

^ Memorabilia of Socrates, Book iv, chap. ii. 



TFIE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 147 

own study and thought to equip himself for the career 
to which he aspired. Socrates, observing this, made a 
point of uttering in the hearing of Euthydemus remarks 
to the effect that no man could prepare himself for the 
work of a statesman merely by reading, or without 
special discipline in the particular tasks which he 
proposed later to undertake. As Euthydemus, with the 
superior self-confidence of youth, was wont to withdraw 
from conversations of this kind, Socrates satirized his 
procedure by depicting him as applying to the public 
for the office not of a statesman but of a physician: — 

"I, O men of Athens" [he imagines Euthydemus saying], 
''have never learned the medical art from anyone, nor have 
been desirous that any physician should be my instructor; 
for I have constantly been on my guard, not only against 
learning anything of the art from anyone, but even against 
appearing to have learned the medical art; nevertheless, con- 
fer on me this medical appointment; for I will endeavour to 
learn by making experiments upon you." ^ 

In like manner he points out that any person who wished 
to learn to play the flute or to ride would go for tuition 
to masters of those simple arts; and that the pursuits 
of the statesman, being incalculably more difficult, 
necessitated special instruction in a much greater degree. 
Afterwards, out of consideration for the modesty of 
the young man, Socrates went alone to a certain bridle- 
maker's shop where Euthydemus was wont to read, and 
questioned him concerning his books. He begins with a 
half-ironical expression of his admiration, ''because you 
have not preferred acquiring treasures of silver and 
gold rather than of wisdom." He then, by a series of 

^ Memorabilia, loc. cit., § 5. 



148 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

questions, elicits the confession that Euthydemus was 
desirous of attaining that talent "by which men become 
skilled in governing states, in managing households, 
able to command, and qualified to benefit other men as 
well as themselves." His next step is to raise artfully 
the question of the nature of justice. Euthydemus is 
at first quite confident that he will be able to enumerate 
the works of justice, and to distinguish them from those 
of injustice. Socrates proposes to make fists of these 
"works," and to draw up a catalogue from his victim's 
dictation. Under the heading of injustice he thus enu- 
merates falsehood, deceit, the enslavement of men, etc. 
Having extracted these data, he at once proceeds to 
state cases in which every one of them might be practised 
justly, — for example, the enslavement of an unjust and 
hostile people by the leader of an army. 

Not being able to deny this, Euthydemus qualifies 
his former assertions by maintaining that it was just 
to do such things to enemies, but unjust to practise them 
towards friends. Hereupon Socrates, by stating more 
hypothetical cases, extorts the acknowledgment that 
this distinction also fails. A father, for example, would 
be right to deceive a sick son by giving him medicine as 
ordinary food; or a man might justly steal the sword 
with which his friend intended to slay himself. Euthy- 
demus is by this time reduced to saying, "I no longer put 
confidence in the answers which I give, for all that I 
said before appears to me now to be quite different 
from what I then thought." He ventures, however, to 
suggest that intentional deception is more unjust than 
involuntary deception. 

By a highly sophistical argument, which imposes upon 
Euthydemus, Socrates next compels the admission that 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 149 

a man who knows what is just but practises injustice 
is more just than he who does just deeds unreflectingly. 
With many more questions Socrates produces in the 
young man the disheartening reahzation that he does 
not know what is good, either for himself or for others. 
*' These points, however," proceeds Socrates, "you have 
perhaps not sufficiently considered, from a too confident 
belief that you wxre already well acquainted with them; 
but since you intend to be at the head of a democratic 
government, you doubtless know what a democracy 
is." "Assuredly," answers Euthydemus, and defines 
the demos as consisting of the poorer class of citizens. 
Socrates promptly catches him here by asking him what 
constitutes poverty. Having shown that small means 
were sufficient for some, while large fortunes were insuffi- 
cient for others, and therefore that the conventional 
judgment as to riches and poverty must be in many 
cases inverted, he at last forces the bewildered youth to 
say, "I am considering whether it would not be best 
for me to be silent, for I seem to know absolutely 
nothing." 

Of those who were thus treated by Socrates [says Xeno- 
phon] many came to him no more, and these he regarded as 
too dull to be improved; but Euthydemus, on the contrary, 
conceived that he could by no other means become an es- 
timable character than by associating with Socrates as much 
as possible; and he in consequence never quitted him, unless 
some necessary business obliged him to do so. He also 
imitated many of his habits. When Socrates saw that he 
was thus disposed, he no longer puzzled him with questions, 
but explained to him in the simplest and clearest manner 
what he thought that he ought to know, and what it would 
be best for him to study. 



I50 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

We must remember that this terrible dialectic ma- 
chine, in which poor Euthydemus was crushed, was not 
employed by Socrates for the sake of its negative results. 
He neither wished to display his own cleverness, nor to 
provide the young men with an instrument by which 
they might make themselves a nuisance to others. His 
unshakable conviction was that, hard as the obtaining 
of true knowledge may be, yet the greatest obstacle to 
it was men's false idea that they already possessed it. 
Now from this false idea very few of us are free. We 
are all more or less in the position of that student of 
botany who defined a leaf as ''a flat green object which 
we know all about already." Until this illusion of 
knowledge is removed, truth can gain no entrance into 
the mind. 

Socrates is differentiated from the Sophists in part by 
the fact that he never used his critical method for its 
own sake, and that he was as rigorous with himself as 
with others, and as ready to be confuted as to confute. 
Despite the genuine modesty with which he avowed his 
own ignorance, moreover, we know that he had in re- 
serve a body of very definite and positive ideas touching 
all the problems of the conduct of life, which he was 
eager to communicate to his pupils as soon as he had 
disciplined them into readiness for it. First he must 
convict them of sin, that afterwards he might initiate 
them into the way of right knowledge and righteousness. 

To what positive beliefs the process of conviction was 
introductory, we may see in the Platonic Dialogues. 
There we have an inexhaustible fount of ideas, many of 
which to-day are being laboriously rediscovered and 
trumpeted abroad as the newest and best results of 
human wisdom. The Republic offers us the majestic 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 151 

image of an ideal State, governed competently and be- 
nevolently by an aristocracy, in the literal sense of that 
term, — that is, by a caste selected in virtue of its natural 
endowments and educated by a lifelong rigorous discip- 
line for the lofty functions it is destined to discharge. 
These governors are to possess no property of their own, 
in order that they may be absolutely disinterested in 
their office.^ 

In outlining their studies, Socrates incidentally lays 
down one of the most fundamental of the modern prin- 
ciples of pedagogy, which is that the voluntary interest 
and self-activity of the pupil must always be engaged.^ 

Nor does he fail to pierce through that most obstinate 
of prejudices which until our own day has excluded 
woman from an equal part with man in the control of 
the world's affairs.^ 

The idea of the selective breeding of the human race, 
which is the inspiration of our modern eugenics move- 
ment, is equally famihar to Plato. He also avoids that 
degradation of it which, by reducing it to the level of 
pigeon-fancying or cattle-breeding, would make it in- 
compatible with the spiritual dignity of mankind. Greek 

^ Republic, Book iii, §§ 416-17. 

2 "A free man ought to be a free man in the acquisition of knowledge. 
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm; but knowledge which 
is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind." — Republic, 
Book viii, § 536. 

^ "In the administration of a State, neither a woman as a woman, nor 
a man as a man, has any special function, but the gifts of Jiatiire are 
equally diffused in both sexes. . . . 

"The woman has equally with the man the qualities which make a 
guardian; she differs only in degrees of strength. . . . 

"Being of the same nature with them, ought they not to have the 
same pursuits? . . . 

"The contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality a 
violation of nature." — Republic, Book v, §§ 455-56. 



152 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

as he is, Plato does not suggest that bodil}' fineness 
should be the sole end aimed at in a eugenic scheme. It 
is the blending of spiritual qualities, for the purpose of 
ensuring their harmonious balance and stability, that 
he advocates. His plan is ''to make matrimony as holy 
as possible, the most beneficial marriages being the 
most holy." 

Such are a few of the ideas, commonly supposed to be 
essentially modern, which we find presented by the 
Platonic Socrates, and discussed with a many-sidedness 
and maturity of wisdom all too rare in our own day. Yet 
not alone for these are we indebted to him. Far more 
important is the teaching, which is constantly recurring 
in his conversations, that morality finds its basis in the 
nature of man and of things, and its justification in the 
quality of character which it produces. The essential 
fallacy of the school which claims (however falsely) to 
follow Nietzsche is the notion that a man can trample 
down the dictates of conscience, can utterly ignore 
the good of others and use them merely as a means 
to his selfish ends, and can be the same man after he 
has done this as he was before. The unanswerable 
refutation of this naive idea is the priceless achieve- 
ment of Socrates. ''Do not imagine," he says in effect, 
"that we are telling you to be honest, truthful, chaste, 
sober, just and merciful, in order to prevent you from 
enjoying life and being happy. On the contrary, it is 
because we are as deeply interested in your self-fulfill- 
ment as you yourself can be, that we give you this coun- 
sel. Try it and see. Prove all things, but hold fast 
that which is good." Nowhere is the doctrine of the 
inevitable deterioration that follows upon immorality 
more perfectly brought out than in the great myths 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 153 

in the Gorgias ^ and in the Phaedo,^ in which, as 
elsewhere, Plato advances the idea of eternal punish- 
ment, as being the only adequate expression of the in- 
curable corruption of a soul which has chosen evil and 
systematically committed the worst crimes. With this 
teaching he combines the humane and rational doctrine 
that the purpose of punishment should be either re- 
formatory or exemplary, but never vindictive.^ 

Be it remembered that the Platonic myths "^ embody 
no dogmatic teaching. They are attempts to express 
in pictures the truths which cannot be conveyed by 
words. The ultimate purpose of the teacher — Socrates 
or Plato — is to arouse something more than a mere logical 
assent to his positions. He desires to quicken an en- 
thusiastic conviction which shall fructify in ennobling 
and consistent action. Therefore it is that, after ex- 
hausting all the resources of his dialectic art, he pre- 
cipitates into mythical pictures the profound intuitive 
convictions which are the inspiration of his own life. 

^ Sections 524-25. 2 Sections 1 13-14. 

^ "Now the proper office of punishment is twofold; he who is rightly 
punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought 
to be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he sufifers, 
and fear and become better; those who are punished by gods and men, 
and improved, are those whose sins are curable; still the way of im- 
proving them, as in this world so also in another, is by pain and suffering; 
for there is no other way in which they can be delivered from their evil. 
But they who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and are incurable 
by reason of their crimes, are made examples; for, as they are incurable, 
the time has passed at which they can receive any benefit themselves. 
But others get good when they behold them for ever enduring the most 
terrible and painful and fearful sufferings as the penalty of their sins; 
there they are, hanging up as examples, in the prison-house of the world 
below, a spectacle and a warning to all unrighteous men who come 
thither." — Gorgias, § 527. 

^ In this connection should be studied the excellent treatise on The 
Myths of Plato, by Professor J. A. Stewart, of Oxford. 



154 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The question whether life is good and is worth living 
presents itself to the intellect as a problem demanding 
to be solved; but the whole man, — the synthesis in which 
intellect is but one element — is the concrete solution of 
that problem. He is the outcome of action by past 
generations upon the instinctive but indemonstrable 
certamty that life is good. On the plane of rational and 
conceptual thought the question, Is life worth living? 
is unanswerable, and therefore idle; but the answer is 
given in the fact that we are ahve, and in the further 
fact that we cannot act save upon the presupposition 
that Kfe is worth living. 

Now the service of myth and poetry consists in re- 
storing to us the vision of the world as felt. It precipi- 
tates and communicates what Professor Stewart has 
well called ''transcendental feeling." The purpose of 
the myth-form is not to answer questions, but, by touch- 
ing hidden chords, to stir the memory and open the 
forgetful eyes. Our greatest modern American poet, 
William Vaughn Moody, in his drama The Fire-hringer, 
has some lines which exactly convey this function of 
myth. It is to restore to consciousness the sense of 

... an inner freshness in the dew, 
A look inscrutable the stars put on, 
A fount of secret colour in the dawn; 
After dayfall a daylight that remains, 
Brighter than what is gone. 

Among the unutterable truths by which the whole 
life of Socrates was animated, the chief was his convic- 
tion of the unconditional worth and imperativeness of the 
law of virtue, considered not as an arbitrary command 
imposed from without, but as the expression of that 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 155 

deepest selfhood in man which is one with the ultimate 
reality of the universe. This it is which he seeks to con- 
vey by the doctrine of immortaUty and of the eternal 
punishment of the desperately wicked, who incur this 
fate as the natural consequence of having violated their 
own essential nature. Such is his answer to the clever 
sophistry which declares morality to be a mere bundle 
of conventions devised by "the many weak." 

Here, as elsewhere in this book, I find myself enmeshed 
in the hopeless difficulty of treating in a single chapter 
a theme to which even a large volume could not do jus- 
tice. Yet perhaps I may make my peace with the reader, 
and with the imperial spirit of Socrates, if I can but 
achieve the one purpose of this inadequate sketch. I 
am not seeking to give a synoptic outline that shall 
serve in lieu of first-hand study, but only to bring my 
readers to Plato. 

It was once said of Shakespeare that he was ''an intel- 
lectual ocean, whose waves washed all the shores of 
thought." This is an excellent phrase, though as applied 
to Shakespeare it is inept and incongruous; but it does 
with most felicitous appropriateness characterize Plato. 
My contention is that the Platonic Dialogues contain 
a revelation as genuinely divine as that of the Hebrew 
Scriptures. Nor do I use these words sentimentally, 
but with a vivid and clear idea in mind which I wish 
to convey by them. Revelation does not mean the 
disclosure, from a superhuman source, of new truth 
which the mind of man could not otherwise attain. 
There is perhaps not a single doctrine in the Bible 
that has not been set forth by other men whom nobody 
asserts to have been supernaturally enlightened. What 
revelation practically means is the presentation of 



156 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

spiritual truth with vivifying power, so that it becomes 
not a mere intellectual behef but a voHtional force. 
That truth is to me a revelation which springs to life 
within me, changing the course of my conduct and the 
quahty of my character. 

In this sense, there is to some extent a divine revela- 
tion in the Hterature of every nation, but pre-eminently 
in the Hteratures of Palestine and Greece. Of the in- 
fluence of the Bible it would be irrelevant to speak here; 
and my silence should not be understood as implying dis- 
paragement of it. But Plato for more than twenty 
centuries has been to the learned and the elect what the 
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures have been to the mass. 
One of the advances most earnestly to be desired is that 
he may henceforth become for the mass what hitherto 
he has been only for the minority.^ To say that this 
is impossible would be to pass a final condemnation upon 
democracy. For the source of all the rawnesses from 
which our democracy suffers is precisely the lack of such 

^ This injBuence of Plato has been expressed in a manner beyond 
rivalry by Emerson: "These sentences contain the culture of nations. 
These are the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of 
literatures. A disciphne it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, 
language, rhetoric, ontology, morals or practical wisdom. There was 
never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come all things that are 
still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes 
he among our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which 
all these drift boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for 
twenty-two hundred years, every brisk young man who says in succession 
fine things to each reluctant generation, — Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, 
Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge, — is some reader of Plato, 
translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things. Even the men 
of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall 
I say?) of coming after this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, 
Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg, Goethe, are likewise his 
debtors, and must say after him." — Essay on Plato, in Representative 
Men. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 157 

enlightenment as philosophy can give. We walk in 
darkness because we are materialists, and by necessary 
consequence idolaters. We are bemused by the hypno- 
tism of sense and outward things. By nobody can this 
baleful spell be so effectively and permanently remitted 
as by the enchanter Plato. Our popular religion would 
be completely transfigured and incalculably enhanced 
in its value as a light and a force for the conduct of life 
if its ministers and adherents were disciplined from 
childhood in Plato as they are in the Bible. They should 
know the words of Socrates as familiarly as they know 
the words of Jesus. 

It is complained that ethical doctrine is cold and 
abstract, and that for the purposes of religion a per- 
sonality is needed, in whom the abstract truth shall 
be incarnate, and upon whose strength the wayfaring 
man may draw. One of the virtues of the Platonic 
literature is that it meets this need. In the pages of 
Plato we do indeed find a person, as distinct, as original, 
as inspiring and stimulating as the divine person whom 
fifty generations have found in the Gospels. The com- 
bination in Plato of the skill of the poet and dramatist 
with an unexampled power of abstract thought consti- 
tutes one of the high-water marks of the literature of 
all time. How desperately difficult is the dialogue as 
a literary vehicle for philosophic teaching is demon- 
strated by the almost universal failure of Plato's imi- 
tators. 

The Platonic secret is the possession, and the use in 
the service of ethical philosophy, of a power of characteri- 
zation equal to that of a Shakespeare or a Dickens. 
Without resorting to description, but simply by placing 
self-disclosing words in the mouths of his characters, 



158 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

Plato renders them as vivid and as highly individualized 
as those of the greatest fiction or drama. Think of the 
impression he gives of the reeling demigod Alcibiades 
in the Symposium,^ and of the dramatic way in which 
the picture of his entrance, ''crowned with a massive 
garland of ivy and wall-flowers, and having his head 
flowing with ribbons/' is timed to relax the tension 
produced by "that celestial colloquy sublime" with 
which Socrates has just "strained to the height" the 
reader's mental and spiritual powers. Consider, again, 
the way in which the noble modesty and rare abihties 
of Theaetetus are anticipated, and afterwards mani- 
fested in his own person. Or study by the canons of 
dramatic or fictional criticism the character of the 
kindly old Crito, so loyal to his friend and master that 
he will surrender, though with a breaking heart, the 
hope of saving that master's life, rather than urge him 
to violate his conscience. One of the noblest Hterary 
revenges in history is that taken by Plato upon Aris- 
tophanes, by introducing that slanderous comedian in 
the Symposium, and placing upon his lips a story ^ en- 
tirely in his spirit, but finer than anything he could 
himself have done. 

Thus might one go through the rich gallery of Plato's 
pictures of other men, each depicted with some master- 
touches that make them living and unforgettable. But 
the glory of them all is gathered up and transcended in 
the central picture of Socrates himself, the greatest 
example in human story of inflexible integrity combined 
with unfailing urbanity and practical sagacity. Socrates 
is such a gentleman that any glimpse of him makes us 
ashamed of our modern vulgarity. In his poverty he 
^ Sections 212-13. ^ Sections 189-93. 



THE RESURRECTION OF SOCRATES 159 

is richer than our millionaires, more majestic than 
our kings. In his freedom from pedantry he puts to 
shame many of our educators, whose whole vitality 
is absorbed in a single speciahsm. Socrates is capable 
of such subtlety of intellectual construction and dis- 
crimination as human thought has never surpassed. 
Yet he is the beloved boon companion of the young men, 
who are able at once to revere and to chaff him. And 
which among the modern thinkers who strive to be 
impartial has ever rivalled the dispassionateness of one 
who (as we see in the Crito) would not condescend to 
twist an argument even to save his life? 

Addison, in one of his charming essays, uses the phrase, 
''the divine Socrates." ^ If this epithet is not to be an 
empty word, it must connote, as I have suggested, the 
power of creating spiritual life in others. Such divinity 
can no more be denied to Socrates than to Jesus. To 
enter the presence of the immortal Athenian is to be 
made ashamed of all that is low and petty and self- 
centred. For he is not merely an example of unsur- 
passable human grandeur, but also a living source of en- 
noblement to all who approach him. He is, in short, a 
Saviour. 

* Spectator y No. 146. 



CHAPTER VI 

inspiration: its nature and conditions 

The time in which we Hve has one characteristic which 
it shares in common with all preceding periods. This 
is the tendency to self-depreciation. We hear on every 
hand that the age lacks inspiration, and does not com- 
mand the conditions which lead to the emergence of 
genius in any department. We have fallen, it is said, on 
a time of machinery and mediocrity. Masters of the 
means of life to a degree unparalleled by any former 
epoch, we have lost sight of the ends of life. Nay, even 
the mastery of machinery is in great measure illusory, 
for we tend ever more and more to become the slaves 
of the great engines which our hands have made. The 
outward and visible mechanism is a symbol of our 
hypnotization by the mechanical energies of life. We 
have lost our grip of the spirit as a force and a cause of 
events. We regard ourselves as phenomena, as effects, 
as links in a chain, mere vehicles of forces which we can- 
not control or direct. 

Self -depreciation, however, on some pretext or other, 
is, as I have said, a characteristic of all ages. The dis- 
paraging contrast between our own day and former 
periods is a part of the perennial illusion of "the good 
old times" — those golden days whose disappearance has 
been lamented by writers in every age, from Homer to 
our own. When Sir Owen Seaman was appointed editor 
of Punch, somebody complained to him that the paper 

i6o 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS i6i 

was not half so good as it used to be. He replied, *'No, 
it never was." The great humorist here supplied the 
true refutation of all pessimistic comparisons between 
the present and the past. When we are told that times 
are not so good as formerly, the answer is, ''No, they 
never were." Homer bewails the decadence of the men 
of his day as compared with an earlier race, any one 
of whom could hurl a rock that not three of Homer's 
contemporaries could lift. Bacon's contempt for the 
degenerate dramatic poetry of his time is a phenomenon 
that we do well to remember. Addison, writing in the 
noonday of what was afterwards called the Augustan 
age of English hterature, is full of satire over the cor- 
rupt taste of his contemporaries. The inspiration of an 
age is thus almost always concealed from those who are 
its chief embodiments. 

I propose in this chapter to attempt an analysis of the 
conditions under which what we term inspiration mani- 
fests itself, with a view to arriving, if possible, at an 
approximate and working definition of it. For one of 
our difficulties is the vagueness of the idea. Not knowing 
what inspiration substantively is, knowing it only 
negatively (that is, being conscious when it is absent), 
or only adjectivally — through its effects, which fre- 
quently do not appear until it is spent — we are unable 
to interpret rightly the signs of its approach, or to prepare 
the conditions which favour its manifestation. 

To almost all of us, whether our antecedents be Chris- 
tian or Jewish, the term inspiration still suggests, first of 
all, the Bible. We were brought up on the idea that 
that one book is inspired, in a sense in which no others are. 
Let us, then, try to determine what the inspiration of the 
Bible has practically meant to those who believed in it, 



i62 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and what is the value of the theory by which they sought 
to account for their experience. 

The doctrine of BibHcal inspiration was not hit upon 
by a mere vagary of the human mind. There was a sohd 
basis of experience out of which it grew. The history of 
Protestantism and Puritanism convinces us that those 
who formulated the mechanical doctrine of verbal in- 
fallibility were driven to do so by phenomena which cer- 
tainly called for some explanation. They had come into 
touch with a vitalizing and transforming power as a 
result of their devout study of the Hebrew books. The 
martyrs of Smithfield, the Pilgrim Fathers, Cromwell's 
Ironsides, John Bunyan and George Fox, — all these and 
many others were instances of the power which somehow 
flowed from those old pages. It was no delusion of theirs 
that they had been raised above themselves. They had 
revalued all the values of life. They had been quickened 
into a boundless humility towards the Moral Ideal, which 
they envisaged as a personal God, and into a boundless 
courage and self-rehance in facing the unjust claims of 
kings and tyrants. Macaulay has well and truly said 
of the Puritan that ''he prostrated himself in the dust 
before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his 
king." ^ Verily, there was some wonderful power which 
could thus make martyrs, heroes, soldiers and statesmen 
out of the lackeys and apprentices of London, the tinkers, 
cobblers and hinds of the countryside. 

It needs but slight study of literature to enable us to 
realize that it was the intense passion for justice of the 
Hebrew prophets, expressed in the burning eloquence 
of the EngHsh version, and conned with the reverence 
naturally accorded to what was considered a divine 
^ Essay on Milton. 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 163 

revelation, which thus entered into the souls of men, 
making the weak strong and the strong stronger, trans- 
muting the commonplace into the rare soul, and quicken- 
ing into genius and the power of leadership characters 
that without this inspiration would have remained 
mediocre. 

The misfortune was that owing to the very limited 
literary experience of those who underwent this trans- 
formation, they were able to give only an inadequate 
and misleading account of it. They resorted to a theory 
according to which the Biblical books were inspired, 
but not their writers. The old doctrine of the verbal 
inspiration and infallibility of the Bible means that the 
writers did not express their selfhood in what they wrote. 
It was not their human souls that were incarnated in 
these undying utterances. They functioned merely as 
amanuenses to a conscious intelligence other than their 
own. Their highest achievement was a microscopic 
accuracy in transmitting what had thus been commu- 
nicated to them. They played the part only of steno- 
graphers or dictaphone records ; and it is not customary 
to speak of stenographers as inspired, save in a satirical 
sense. 

Out of this forced and unnatural theory of verbal in- 
spiration there arose the childlike notion that all the 
statements of fact in the Bible must necessarily be true. 
We look back to-day upon this theory with a certain 
sense of amusement, not untinctured with shame. It is 
only just to remind ourselves, however, that the essential 
premiss of the theory in question was accepted not only 
by the orthodox, but also by the iconoclastic rationalists 
of the school of Thomas Paine, Charles Bradlaugh, and 
Robert Ingersoll, who fought against them. The ortho- 



1 64 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

dox maintained (as we saw above, p. 45 ff.) a sort of cir- 
cular argument, to the effect that every statement in the 
Bible must be true because the Bible was inspired; and, 
conversely, that the inspiration of the Bible was proved 
by the fact that all the statements it contained were true. 
The iconoclasts, on the other hand, accepting the crite- 
rion of inspiration thus implied, maintained that because 
there were errors of fact in the Bible it could not be in- 
spired. 

It is the naivete of this position which strikes us to-day. 
We smile at arguments which imply that if only Jonah's 
fish had had a slightly larger throat, the critics could 
comfortably have swallowed the story that it swallowed 
Jonah; that if only Noah's ark had been rather larger and 
better ventilated, the story of the Flood might have 
stood as history; that if the periods of the first chapter 
of Genesis had not been quite so obviously meant for 
literal days, the account of creation might have passed 
muster. Such an attitude makes the days of the "cudgel 
controversialists" seem indefinitely remote from our 
own, recent as they are in fact. We feel about the whole 
preposterous contention much as we might feel about 
a dispute concerning the inspiration of Macbeth, one 
party to which should maintain that the play was in- 
spired because all its historical statements were true, the 
other contending that it could not be so because some of 
its assertions were erroneous. We are amazed by the 
ineptitude of the criterion, and the irrelevance of the 
whole discussion. With a wider literary experience, a 
broader acquaintance (as Matthew Arnold said) with 
the way the human mind works, we assume without dis- 
cussion the principle that the test of inspiration is the 
effect of any great literature in quickening the mind and 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 165 

conscience of those who study it, and in arousing them 
in turn to original activity. 

The Bible writers give us scarcely any hint of what 
their inspiration meant to them; but the old mechanical 
view is clearly due to a falsely literal interpretation of 
their poetic and figurative phrases. In one of the few 
places where a Biblical writer lets us to some extent into 
his secret, we get an account totally different from that 
of the amanuensis-theory. The writer of the Book of 
Revelation tells us, indeed, that he was in the Spirit, and 
that while in the Spirit he was shown a vision of the 
celestial world and talked with hierarchs of the host of 
heaven. By these he was conducted and shown the 
things that must shortly come to pass. But the words 
in which he was to describe the vision, unlike the special 
messages to the seven Churches, were in no wise dictated 
to him. "What thou seest write in a book," says the 
great voice, ^ but the narrator is left to choose his own 
language for this purpose. He chose words which, even 
through the medium of a translation, stir the blood after 
nineteen centuries, amazing us by their poignant elo- 
quence and by a descriptive power which sets a new and 
higher limit to the known range of literary possibility. 
Yet the work is confessedly that of a man, who is not 
merely the amanuensis of a superhuman intelligence. 
I am not, of course, contending that we have in Revela- 
tion a literal transcript of a subjective experience. The 
more we allow, however, for the free play of the writer's 
poetic genius, the more is this view of his inspiration 
strengthened. 

St. Paul too was a man of visions, and occasionally 
he intimates that he is voicing an authority higher than 

iRev. i, II. 



1 66 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

his own,^ though at other times he acknowledges that he 
is speaking out of his own moral judgment,^ and even 
expresses some doubt as to whether he has the sanction 
of the Lord.^ But few, reading his letters, with their 
strongly marked individuality of style and their obvious 
relation to the stormy incidents of his busy and heroic 
career, can now seriously entertain the notion that their 
inspiration emanated from any other source than his own 
mind and experience. 

It is the phrase of the prophets, '' Thus saith the Lord," 
which has chiefly given rise to the theory of mechanical 
and verbal inspiration. When the prophet, by brooding 
over the iniquity of his people and musing deeply on 
the principles and ideals which ought to guide Israel, 
had attained to a clear vision of the course that should be 
followed, he prefaced his appeal to his compatriots with 
the words, ^'Thus saith the Lord." We may take our 
choice between believing that he meant, "Thus saith the 
universal moral judgment, which exists both in you 
and me; whose dicta you can verify by searching your 
own conscience and your own experience," and believ- 
ing that he meant, "Thus saith a superhuman and 
supernatural conscious intelligence, which has revealed 
to me what I never could have discovered for myself, 
and what you are bound to believe upon its authority, 
without hope of verifying it." Which of the two is the 
sounder construction is a question which answers itself 
to anyone familiar with other inspired literatures as well 
as with the Bible. 

In the writings of Plato we find a most interesting 
account of inspiration, as well as one of the most mar- 
^ E. g., I Cor. vii, lo. ^ Ibid., verse 12. ^ Ibid., verse 25. 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 167 

vellous instances of it which antiquity has bequeathed 
to us. Professor Jowett has well said of the Sympo- 
sium that of all the works of Plato it **is the most per- 
fect in form, and may be truly thought to contain more 
than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe 
said of one of his own writings, more than the author 
himself knew." The Symposium contains that incom- 
parable speech of Socrates which ostensibly embodies 
the substance of a revelation made to him by the wise 
woman Diotima, the prophetess. Happily, there is no 
narrow-minded religious sect of Platonists burning to 
convince us that this account of the wise woman is 
literal fact, and that Socrates was merely the trans- 
mitter of the doctrine of inspiration which his speech for- 
mulates. The substance of the revelation is, indeed, little 
more than a compendium of principles and doctrines set 
forth in many other parts of the Socratic teaching as 
conveyed to us by Plato. 

Its teaching is that inspiration is a reality, — a possible 
experience; yet one that may come only after the most 
rigorous and persistent intellectual discipline, begun in 
childhood and continued into mature life. The child has 
to start by concentrating his attention upon some one 
beautiful form; then he must study many such forms. 
He will thus become aware of the identity of the beauty 
embodied in them all. Gradually, after the study of fair 
forms, he can proceed to the contemplation of fair ideas 
and of institutions animated by them: and at last it may 
be his good hap to have the vision of Beauty absolute 
and eternal burst upon his view. Such, says Socrates, 
is the only possible means of attaining to inspiration; 
and such is the divine reward awaiting him who has fol- 
lowed the gleam ''down the nights and down the days," 



1 68 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and " down the arches of the years"; who has toiled up- 
ward in the night, and laboured over the crags and steeps 
of the mountainous years, until he attains the summit 
whence alone may be beheld ''the high-heaven dawn of 
more than mortal day." I cannot forgo the pleasure of 
quoting the closing sentences of this speech of Socrates: — 

But what if man had eye to see the true beauty — the divine 
beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged 
with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colours and van- 
ities of human life; thither looking, and holding converse 
with the true beauty, divine and simple, and bringing into 
being and educating true creations of virtue, and not idols 
only? Do you not see that in that communion only, behold- 
ing beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to 
bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has 
hold not of an image but of a reality; and, bringing forth and 
educating true virtue, to become the friend of God and be 
immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble 
life?i 

It would be cruel to elaborate the comparison which 
inevitably suggests itself between this passage, from what 
has ordinarily been regarded as profane and secular 
literature, and such books as Daniel and Esther, which 
are included in the canon of works divinely inspired. 

In Platens Republic this theory of inspiration is de- 
picted even more minutely in the celebrated allegory 
of the cave men, at the beginning of the seventh book. 
The native state of man is as that of chained dwellers 
in an underground den, which is lighted only from be- 
hind. These subterranean prisoners can see nothing but 
the shadows before their eyes; hence they mistake the 
^Symposium, §§ 211-12. 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 1 69 

shadows for realities. It may, however, be the hap of one 
of them to break free from his chains, to turn his back 
upon the shadows, and to set out upon the toilsome 
steep that leads upwards to the source of light. His eyes 
will at first be dazzled, but gradually he will become 
capable of seeing those objects which had cast the 
shadows of his previous experience. After a long adapta- 
tion to his new surroundings, he will become capable 
of beholding the moon and stars, and finally of '^ kindling 
his undazzled eye at the full midday beam." 

Here is most beautifully expressed the essential para- 
dox of the Platonic doctrine. The struggle, the dis- 
cipline, the scaling of the heights, — this is the indis- 
pensable preparation for the vision; yet, when that vision 
comes, it is of the nature of revelation. It is not the 
consequence of what the striver has gone through, nor is 
it guaranteed to him. He may or may not attain to the 
beatific vision. Certainly he will not without the long 
preparation; that is indispensable in any case: but he 
may not, even after he has undergone it. The view 
from the mountain-top is not the logical or necessary 
result of the climb: but without the climb it never can 
be seen. 

This intense rationalism of Plato is most unwelcome 
to the mental indolence of our times. We are affiicted 
with a species of Cubists and Futurists, not alone in art, 
but in every department of human activity. Our ears 
are assailed by the doctrine which opposes inspira- 
tion to mental effort, and sets up a false and danger- 
ous antithesis between intellection and intuition. This 
school takes in vain the name of Bergson, and professes 
to have his authority for disparaging hard thinking and 
hard study. There is in truth no justification for this to 



I70 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

be found in Bergson's works. He has proudly and rightly 
claimed that no philosophy gives to the method, spirit 
and results of science a higher value than his own as- 
cribes to them. But because he has emphasized the 
extra-logical factors in the human spirit, and has in- 
sisted that a full and true vision of reality cannot be 
attained by the logical process alone, he is seized upon 
by those who desire to be absolved from the task of hard 
thinking and scientific work. They seek to make him 
the sponsor of an anti-intellectualism which is suicidal, — 
which, indeed, would prevent the development of his 
own philosophical method, as well as of every other 
worthy human enterprise. 

The common shibboleth of the anti-rationalists in 
painting and poetry, as well as in other fields, is a variant 
of the special doctrine of Quakerism. It is possible 
that they may feel shocked or intellectually insulted by 
such an assertion. Yet when they talk, as they do, of 
expressing oneself, irrespective of social consequences, 
they are only parodying the Quaker notion of that Inner 
Light which is directly kindled by the Spirit. They 
forget, too, that before you can express yourself, you 
must first acquire a self that is worth expressing; and 
they ignore the difficulty of developing such selfhood. 

It is not for a moment to be questioned that the in- 
spired artist can and rightly does transcend the prescrip- 
tions of technique. It is, indeed, his breaches of rule 
that create rules for his successors. His felicitous de- 
partures from convention become a new technique for 
after-times. But one condition of transcending an 
established artistic standard is that a man shall first 
have mastered it; and this can only be done through in- 
tense labour. 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 171 

An amusing illustration of this fact was once brought 
to a friend of mine by a young lady who sought his judg- 
ment upon a poem she had written. It was a poem of 
the vers lihre order. It reminded him irresistibly of the 
description of the earth in the first chapter of Genesis, 
in that it was not only without form, but also void. 
Wishing to be truthful as well as polite, my friend ven- 
tured the suggestion that there are two possible reasons 
for ignoring technique: the one, because you are above 
it; the other, because you can't do it: and that her poem 
left in his mind a certain doubt as to which of these two 
reasons had actuated her. 

The refutation of the lazy modern theory that in- 
spiration is independent of intellectual effort is supplied 
by a mere glance at the life and work of any great creative 
artist. Think of Shakespeare's years of apprenticeship, 
when, in addition to direct work in every department 
of practical stagecraft, he whetted the edge of his poetic 
power upon all sorts of old plays, inserting characters 
and incidents to suit the taste of the London tradesmen 
and their wives and 'prentice boys, as well as his own. 

I would prefer, however, to cite an instance which to 
most readers is unfortunately less familiar. We have 
almost forgotten that Milton is not only a greater poet 
even than Shakespeare in respect of sheer sublimity 
(though, to be sure, a lesser poet in respect of versatility 
and insight into human character), but also the writer 
of the very greatest prose in the English language. Even 
those who study him in high school or college generally 
become acquainted only with fragments of his prose 
work, particularly the Areopagitica. This is a great mis- 
fortune; for in the tomes that we do not read, despite 
the seeming obsoleteness of many of their themes, there 



172 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

are scores of passages full of moral wisdom, lofty thinking, 
and a majestic eloquence with which nothing outside the 
English Bible is worthy to be compared.^ 

Now, making every allowance for Milton's exceptional 
native endowment that the anti-intellectual inspira- 
tionist cares to insist upon, it remains true that his 
mastery in prose and verse was achieved only by the 
deliberate dedication of his entire life to his vocation. 
Even from his Cambridge days he was planning the epic 
which he did not write until his old age. After a period of 
quiet retirement in the country followed by Continental 
travels, he felt bound in conscience to turn aside from 
his poetic projects and to take a share in the great battle 
for mental and political freedom which was then breaking 
out in England. He could not refuse to write in the 
cause of religious liberty, though the controversy was 
distasteful to him. By reason of his exceptional scholar- 
ship and his rare powers of expression, his conscience 
challenged him to do a work which the hour demanded, 
and which he more than other men was equipped to 
perform. Yet he cannot conceal his bent, or abstain from 
the topic that really interests him. In the midst of a' 
volume of argumentation about the government of the 

^ I am reminded that I am here repeating a lament voiced ninety- 
years ago by Macaulay: "It is to be regretted that the prose writings of 
Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they 
deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted 
with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages 
compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into in- 
significance. They are a perfect field of cloth-of-gold. The style is 
stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earher books of the 
Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts 
of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find 
a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own 
majestic language, 'a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sym- 
phonies.'" — Essay on Milton (1825). 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 173 

Church by bishops, he suddenly interpolates an auto- 
biographical fragment, which to us is worth more than 
all the rest of the book, though he probably inserted it 
with reluctance and with a strong sense of its irrelevance. 
In this he explains how it is that he, who had dedicated 
his life to poetry, felt constrained to join in the hurly- 
burly of theological disputes. He also tells the reader 
that the work he still hopes to achieve is such as cannot 
be done by a young man, because of the long and arduous 
preparation which is an indispensable preHminary to it. 
Note the spirit in which he tells of his poetic vocation, 
and his sense of the way to equip himself for it. He 
speaks first of "an inward prompting, which now grew 
daily upon me, that by labour and intense study (which 
I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the 
strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave some- 
thing so written to after-times as they should not will- 
ingly let it die." And a little later he thus pledges him- 
self to his contemporaries : — 

Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing 
reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with 
him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as 
being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the 
vapours of wine ; like that which flows at waste from the pen 
of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming 
parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame 
Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to 
that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and 
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire 
of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. 
To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady 
observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and 
affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine 



174 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation 
from as many as are not loth to hazard so much creduUty 
upon the best pledges that I can give them. ^ 

Such was the discipline, rigorously continued from 
childhood almost into old age, which led to the in- 
spiration for Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and 
Samson Agonistes. The notion that this intense in- 
tellectual preparation can be dispensed with would be 
rightly described as an imbecility if it were not even 
more obviously an attempt to find a justification for 
indolence. So far from those who preach it leaving 
something that after-times will not willingly let die, it is 
virtually certain that they can produce nothing that the 
future will be willing to let live; — unless, indeed, we are 
passing into a period of barbarism, and the world has to 
wait another thousand years for a rebirth of true civiliza- 
tion and culture. 

Our own great Emerson is one of the many master- 
spirits who have endorsed the Platonic paradox that 
inspiration can only follow upon intense labour, and yet 
is in no wise guaranteed by it. He also, out of his own 
experience, is able to testify to the truth that when the 
inspiration comes it is of the nature of a revelation, — a 
disclosure of something unanticipated, unpredictable. 
"We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its 
manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. 
These are always attended by the emotion of the sub- 
lime.'^ 2 And elsewhere he writes: — 

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is 

^ Milton, The Reason of Church-Government urged against Prelaty, 
Intro, to Book ii (1641). 

2 Emerson, The Over-Soul, in Collected Works, vol. ii, p. 280. 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 175 

not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern 
the footprints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; 
you shall not hear any name; — the way, the thought, the 
good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude 
example and experience. You take the way from man, not 
to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten 
ministers.^ 

In the same spirit Matthew Arnold, who also had 
bought his inspiration at the price of years of labour, 
acknowledges the uncertainty of the celestial visitant. 
When all the conditions for it are prepared, it may or may 
not come: — 

Our conduct is capable, irrespective of what we can our- 
selves certainly answer for, of almost infinitely different de- 
grees of force and energy in the performance of it, of lucidity 
and vividness in the perception of it, of fulness in the satis- 
faction from it; and these degrees may vary from day to 
day, and quite incalculably. Facilities and felicities, — whence 
do they come? suggestions and stimulations, — where do they 
tend? Hardly a day passes but we have some experience 
of them. And so Henry More was led to say "that there 
was something about us that knew better, often, what we 
would be at than we ourselves." 2 

This familiar fact of experience Arnold used as one of 
the chief points in his demonstration of our dependence 
upon a "Power not ourselves." He reminds us how such 
a thing as a neuralgia, which on one day seems an in- 
superable obstacle to any sort of effective work, will on 
another day act as a spur, driving us to more than we 
could attempt without it. Such is the uniform experience 
of all whose inspiration is real. "The spirit bloweth 

^ Self-Reliance, ibid., p. 68. ^ Literature and Dogma, chapter i. 



176 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

where it listeth" — and when it Ksteth. There is no 
royal road to inspiration and the awakening of genius. 
The gods give not to those who have not laboured to win 
their favour; but, even among those who have, they pick 
and choose in a fashion that to us seems arbitrary. 

There is, after all, no mystery here; or, to be more 
exact, there is no greater mystery here than on the lower 
and more familiar planes of life's activities. Every 
athlete knows how incalculable is the thing called 
^'form," even after the trainer's regimen has been 
scrupulously followed. Every singer or actor or public 
speaker can testify to the same experience. No doubt 
there is, here as elsewhere, a definite correlation between 
physical and psychic conditions ; only it is so obscure that 
it has not hitherto been ascertained. Consider, too, the 
element of what is called chance in the field of invention 
and scientific discovery. Why is it that of two men who 
seem equally well equipped and equally gifted by nature, 
one will hit upon a revolutionary discovery or an epoch- 
making invention and not the other, even though both 
are giving the same amount and degree of attention to 
the same subject-matter? 

These facts, whether in regard to poetic inspiration, to 
scientific discovery, or to what is called "form" on the 
cricket-field, attenuate the optimistic certainty which 
was formerly entertained, particularly in regard to 
physical science, that the so-called Baconian method of 
observation and induction was an infallible means of 
arriving at rich discoveries. We find this idea surviving 
into the nineteenth century, and haunting the minds of 
many capable thinkers. Nor must we for a moment for- 
get or under-estimate the invaluable discoveries which 
have been made under its influence. Our debt to empiri- 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 177 

cal science is inexhaustible. The point, however, that 
needs to be borne in mind, especially by young people 
who are preparing for a scientific career, is that the mere 
routine grind of the experimental method, though in- 
dispensable to new discovery, is no unfailing guarantee 
of it. There is always the incalculable factor of the ob- 
server's inspiration. To remember this is the way to 
escape discouragement and to sustain hope through 
many a weary hour of labour. 

The truth in tliis matter has been distorted for us by 
the fact that the moment a scientific worker has a new 
revelation he proceeds to invent a process of argument, 
which he offers to us as the means by which he has 
arrived at his discovery. He himself speedily overlooks 
the fact that his argument is even more of an invention 
than the thing he has hit upon. It is a method rather of 
hiding his tracks than of revealing them. Of course, his 
deception of us and of himself is completely unconscious. 
When one makes a discovery, one has to correlate it by 
reasoning with the rest of one's knowledge. But the 
psychological process of discovery is one in which the 
conclusion invariably comes before the premisses. You 
first catch your hare, and then you proceed to cook it. 
First you have your revelation, and then you frame a 
train of reasoning to legitimatize it among the family of 
things known. 

My argument thus far, if it has succeeded at all, has 
established two points: first, that inspiration, though a 
reality, is an incalculable factor, a visitant apparently 
from outside oneself, upon whose coming any worthy 
achievement depends. The second is that the severest 
and most intense discipline is an indispensable pre- 



178 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

requisite for the experience of inspiration. This holds 
universally, whether in regard to the attainment of reh- 
gious truth, scientific discovery, mechanical invention, 
artistic felicity, or even unwonted success in gymnastics 
or athletics. A third point upon which I must dwell for 
a moment is the fact that the supreme condition for 
experiencing inspiration is contact with the common 
life, or social co-operation with others in concentration 
upon the tasks of the common life. 

There is in the writings of Emerson a strain of in- 
dividualism which would seem to contradict the pro- 
position I have just advanced. His notion seems to be 
that the altitudes of Hfe are always soUtary; that ''we 
descend to meet"; that when on quest for inspiration we 
''take the way from man, not to man." Any student 
of the facts of Emerson's life, however, will admit that 
my contention is consistent with them, if not with 
Emerson's theory. The impulse that drives the thinker 
into the wilderness is one which the common life has 
stirred within him; and that visitant whom he meets in 
the solitude is not indeed any man's individual selfhood, 
but it is the social self, the General Will. This produces 
a quickening of the mental activity on which the thinker 
has previously concentrated, by bringing it to the focal 
point and preventing attention from being dissipated 
upon extraneous matters. 

Thus the mental activity of Emerson, the individualist, 
clearly springs out of his experience with such groups of 
people as those to whom he ministered as a Unitarian 
pastor in Boston. To these groups most of his great 
essays were first read, having been written in response 
to requests from them. The iron string in Emerson — • 
the self-reliance, the defiance of convention and opinion — 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 179 

is his reaction to the demand that he should comply with 
the standards of an orthodoxy none the less narrow and 
stereotyped because it was that of a little group of rela- 
tively advanced thinkers. It was indeed Emerson's 
own Unitarianism which induced his inadequate interpre- 
tation of his experience. Through concentrating upon 
unity, he forgot the multiplicity in unity. He did not 
apprehend the true doctrine of the Trinity; hence his 
Over-Soul apparently springs from nowhere, and is an 
anarchic and unaccountable manifestation. The Over- 
Soul is, in truth, the common mind of two or more per- 
sons animated by an identical principle. This is the ex- 
periential truth in the antique doctrine that the Holy 
Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son. It 
embodies the common rational nature of many men, and 
consequently always manifests itself as a third factor, 
mightier than any of the individuals it inspires. 

The facts which even Emerson's life forces upon our at- 
tention are more clearly exemplified in the genesis of the 
great Hteratures of Israel and Greece. Nothing could be 
clearer than that the Hebrew prophecy and psalmody 
grow out of the common mind of the Jewish people and 
result from the intense devotion of their most sensitive 
souls to the exigencies which the nation had to encounter. 
The prophet is always of the type of Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
and Joan of Arc: a politician, inspired by patriotism. The 
powers developed through years of concentration enable 
him to see the course that his people should take, to 
judge what is amiss in their conduct and in their policy. 
When the vision becomes intense and luminous, when 
the certitude made poignant by love of country and love 
of righteousness has reached its zenith, he bursts out 
with counsel or condemnation in the name of the Lord. 



l8o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The social source of inspiration was clear to the Greek 
thinkers. Aristotle, at the outset of his Politics, insists 
upon the precedence of society over the individual, 
and the dependence of the individual upon society. 
He that is so complete in himself as not to need social 
reinforcement and sustentation is not a man, says 
Aristotle, but either a beast or a god. Socrates knew that 
the philosophy to which he devoted his life could grow 
only out of continuous contact with the minds of other 
human beings. Despite his belief in the inward monitor, 
he was not accustomed to go to the solitudes to listen for 
its promptings. His talk with Phsedrus under the plane- 
tree by the banks of the Ilissus was a rare departure from 
his customary haunting of the Athenian streets. He 
seldom or never went outside the walls of the city. The 
trees, he said, had nothing to teach him. He was willing, 
however, to spend whole days and nights in conversation 
with men immeasurably his inferiors, since he knew that 
it is the clash of mind upon mind which strikes the spark 
of new truth that blazes up into the light of further 
vision. Thus the great Platonic revelation, as divine as 
any that came to the Hebrews, is the outgrowth of one 
school and the inspiration of another. 

Milton, although he had all the characteristics of the 
mental aristocrat, is, no less evidently than Plato, a 
product of social quickening. In the case of his prose 
work this is self-evident. Almost all of it is controversial : 
that is, it grows out of the exigencies of a time when the 
whole of England was divided into two schools of reli- 
gious and political thought, which were in constant con- 
flict over a long period of years. He begins with a 
treatise Of Reformation in England, and proceeds with 
others on Church Government. He next takes up 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS i8i 

the cudgels in behalf of liberty of thought and pubHca- 
tion, seeking to rescue it from the tyranny of the ''new 
presbyter," who had promptly shown himself to be only a 
fresh epiphany of the ''old priest." Later he controverts 
the book forged in the name of the executed king Charles 
I, and defends the people of England against foreign 
criticism of their action in shedding the blood of the 
Lord's Anointed. Among the latest of his prose writings 
are his tracts on A Ready and Easy Way to Establish 
a Free Commonwealth, and on The Likeliest Means 
to Rejjiove Hirelings out of the Church. From first to 
last, it is a splendid manifestation of the interaction 
between a superbly gifted soul and that general soul 
which environed him and had sent him forth. 

If it be urged that what is true of Milton's prose is not 
true of his poetry, I would answer that the subjects of his 
three longest poems alone suffice to prove my contention. 
Why should he have chosen to write of Paradise Lost 
and Paradise Regained, save for the fact that the run 
of his attention was conditioned by that of the party with 
which he had co-operated? His age was the century 
of Puritanism, of Hebraism, of full-blown Protestantism, 
with its mechanical scheme of salvation. It was the 
concentration of the common mind on these ideas that 
caused the concentration upon them of the mind of 
Milton. By native temperament he was rather Greek 
than Hebrew, and he expressed his own bent much more 
clearly in the Allegro, the Penseroso, and the Comus 
than in the fairy-tale of Adam and the myth of the 
Temptation of Christ. 

The proof that inspiration can come only after intense 
study can be given negatively as well as positively. The 
latter side of the argument I have attempted to present 



i82 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

by instancing the apprenticeship of the greatest minds. 
The former can be made evident by considering the in- 
spirations foisted upon the world by people who have 
not undergone the hard toil of preparation. They are 
in general worthless. This is the essential defect in our 
modern habit of mental laziness, which opposes intuition 
to intellect and disparages reasoning as inimical to in- 
spiration. Consider the fantastic result of the Mormon 
attempt to produce a new rehgion on the Hnes of the 
theory of supernaturalism invented to account for the 
revelation given to the Hebrews. Whoever has read the 
Book of Mormon knows that the only good things it con- 
tains are its extensive plagiarisms from the Bible. What- 
ever has been concocted by its author under the in- 
fluence of his inspiration is of no value. 

Christian Science is not morally and intellectually 
defective in the same sense or to the same degree as 
Mormonism. Nor does the juxtaposition of a criticism 
of Mrs. Eddy's cult with that of Joseph Smith imply 
any invidious comparison. Yet the philosophic feeble- 
ness both of Christian Science and of that schism from 
it called the Science of Being, are due to the fact that 
the founders of these cults have misunderstood the na- 
ture of inspiration. They discounted intellectual work. 
They cultivated a passive resignation to the dictates of 
the spiritual visitant. They reproduced the phenomenon 
of "speaking with tongues," against which St. Paul's 
common sense forced him to protest. The result is that 
their books are a mere mass of words, darkening counsel 
without knowledge. They have seized upon a fragment 
of truth and imagined that it fills the universe. They 
have converted this half-truth into a whole error through 
the omission of its complementary truth. By the over- 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 183 

emphasis of their fragment of truth they have succeeded 
only in setting up a rehgion for invahds. What the world 
needs is a rehgion for those who do not need to waste their 
time in feehng their muscles and taking their tempera- 
ture, but are free to do battle with those social evils, the 
existence of which Christian Science very unwisely 
denies. 

The necessity for mental discipline as a propaedeutic 
to inspiration is illustrated also in the history of the 
Society of P'riends. That noble movement grew out of the 
same stirring activity of the social mind which produced 
the prose of Milton. George Fox's intellectual activity, 
though narrow and one-sided, was intense and continu- 
ous. The most eminent of the early Quakers, such men as 
Barclay and Penn, were learned beyond the average, 
according to the standards of their time. Unfortu- 
nately the Quaker conviction of the indispensableness of 
the Inner Light led to the error of confusing the indis- 
pensable with the all-sufficient. It was forgotten that, 
while water is necessary to life, yet one cannot live by 
water alone. The Inner Light, which seems to wax and 
wane independently of the wdll, cannot even begin to 
shine into the dark places unless it has been prepared for 
*'by labour and intense study." The Quakers made a 
mistake in their refusal to establish a regular ministry. 
It is not enough to wait for the Spirit; one has to make 
ready for its coming. The disparagement of conscious 
effort in these matters is a part of the general blunder 
of supernaturalism. 

The most elaborate philosophy of inspiration current 
to-day is that of M. Bergson, which, as already mdicated, 
is being wrongly used to disparage intellect and intellec- 
tual discipline. M. Bergson has sought to do justice 



l84 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

to the fact of inspiration, to admit it among the other 
truths of our mental and psychic life. In order to do this, 
he was compelled to attempt a definition and demarca- 
tion of the function of the discursive intellect. Now to 
show that there are limits to any special activity is not 
in the least to disparage the activity within those limits. 
To admit the existence of art as well as science is not to 
attack science. To say that the artist reaches his results 
by a course different from that of the man of science 
(or at least from that which the man of science is 
generally supposed to follow) is no reflection either 
upon the artist's results or those of the scientific 
worker. 

This is really what Bergson has done. The head 
and front of his offending is that he has declared it 
necessary to combine the procedure of the artist with 
that of the man of science in order to attain a full and 
true vision of reality. Indeed, so far from justifying 
the procedure of our anarchic Cubists and Futurists in 
art and politics, M. Bergson's philosophy is in truth the 
most complete antidote to their pretensions. For it 
implies that the sphere of intuition or inspiration lies 
beyond that of the intellect; and accordingly the frontiers 
of the intellect must be reached and over-passed before 
the realm of inspiration can be entered. 

Now, what is this but a reassertion of what we have 
learned from Plato? It is quite true that when the new vi- 
sion comes, "it is not by any known or accustomed way." 
It comes after but not merely because of intellectual 
preparation. It is post hoc, but not propter hoc. I do 
not, of course, lose sight of the fact that the relation of 
the mental disciphne to the inspiration is causative: 
to deny that would be insane. My point is that the 



rNSPIRATIOX: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 1S5 

inspiration is an effect not of the mental discipline alone, 
but of the combination of this with a complex of other 
factors which (at present) is unanalyzable. 

If this account of the conditions of inspiration be 
sound, we are now perhaps in a position to attempt a 
rough definition of the power whose antecedents we have 
traced. Inspiration, then, let us say, is insight trans- 
muted into purpose and commanding the services of the 
intellect. Insight alone is not inspiration; nor is volition 
without insight. Intellectual activity alone falls far 
short of it. But when the will has been purified and 
quickened by insight, and when the intellect has been 
so disciplined that it is able to serve as the supple and 
facile instrument of the purified will, then — in that 
threefold unity — the celestial visitant appears. Even 
then it seems uncaused, accidental; because we are never 
able to foresee the precise assemblage of the conditions 
of its manifestation. 

This definition of inspiration indicates the way to 
attain it. The precedent conditions are: a fervent desire 
for the best, a humble awareness of one's shortcomings, 
and intense labour to qualify oneself for it. Such is 
the philosophy of Plato; such, too, is the meaning of 
the great picture of inspiration which we owe to the 
Hebrew Isaiah. When the Spirit takes him into the 
presence of the Lord of Hosts and his seraphic sentinels, 
he cries out, — 

Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean 
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for 
mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. Then flew 
one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, 
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and 



1 86 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched 
thy Hps; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 
And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying. Whom shall I 
send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I ; send 



We cannot become the fit champions of the ideal, the 
messengers of the highest, until the uncleanness of our 
lips has been burnt away by painful contact with the 
divine fire; until we have drilled and disciplined ourselves 
out of our pettinesses and self-centred promptings, and 
out of intellectual arrogance and dogmatic certitude. 
Only when littleness and self-sufficiency have been thus 
purged away, only when after intense struggle we have 
attained the divine vision, can we respond to the chal- 
lenge of that eternal reason which presses to actualize 
itself in man, with the words, "Here am I; send me." 

The inspired man makes the mass of us uncomfortable, 
because we cannot live at his level of self-abnegation. 
The great void in our lives is the absence of inspiration. 
We feel the need of the miserable luxuries that enslave 
us because we cannot breathe the upper air, and the 
view from the heights is hidden from us. We live in the 
passing moment. We are querulous and wilful because 
our will has not been caught up and quickened by pur- 
poses that eternalize us, dwarfing into insignificance 
all outer things. He who has been thus transfigured 
is the only man to be envied, the only one whom, what- 
ever he suffer, we never need pity. 

Even for the most highly favoured, the moments of 
vision are rare; but the strength they impart sustains 
the seer through all his after days. As Arnold has sung: 

1 Isaiah vi, 5-8. (R. V.) 



INSPIRATION: ITS NATURE AND CONDITIONS 187 

We cannot kindle when we will 
The fire that in the heart resides. 

The spirit bloweth and is still; 
In mystery our soul abides. 

But tasks in hours of insight willed 

Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. 

He who has thus toiled upw^ard in the night, he who ''by 
labour and intense study" has clarified his intellect and 
purified his will, is the only man who can truly be called 
master of his fate. Because he can be neither bribed 
nor terrified, the world is at his feet. 



CHAPTER VII 

immortality: a study in plato 

If it should happen that among my readers there are 
some hitherto mute, inglorious Shakespeares, I would 
venture to suggest to them that one of the plays for which 
the world is still waiting is that magnificent tragedy in 
three acts, to be entitled, The Death of Socrates. It 
was by a very unfortunate oversight that Shakespeare 
(whom the high gods probably sent into the world for 
the special purpose of writing this play) omitted to do it. 
Perhaps it was because neither North nor Holland 
happened to translate Plato; perhaps because Shake- 
speare felt that the theme was too sublime, even for him. 
Yet it may be that the intention of the gods has been 
not frustrated, but only deferred. It may be that, in the 
fulness of time, after we have recovered from the age of 
Ibsen and Bernard Shaw, the tragedy of The Death of 
Socrates will get itself written and acted. 

Very little actual invention will be needed by its 
author. The materials and the characters are at hand in 
the Platonic trilogy.^ The first act will present the 
trial and condemnation of Socrates, with his superb 
contempt of Court, his refusal to say or do anything 
which might imply that the Court owed him aught save 
honour and respect, or that an acquittal by them, or 
even the granting of maintenance in the Prytaneum, 
would be an unmerited favour to him. The second act 

^ The Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo. 
i88 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 1S9 

will take place in the prison, at an early hour of morning; 
the curtain rising upon the scene where the aged Crito 
watches by the bed of the sleeping Socrates, astonished 
that his friend can rest so soundly, seeing that on the 
morrow he is to die. The sacred ship from Delos has been 
sighted off Sunium, and with her arrival the life of 
Socrates must end, as the life of Meleager ends with the 
consuming of the brand that flamed when he was born. 
The substance of this second act will be the attempt of 
Crito to induce Socrates to escape, and the statement by 
Socrates of his reasons for refusing. 

The third act will set upon the stage the tale told 
by Phaedo to Echecrates of Phlius. The day is that on 
which Socrates is to drink the poison. From early morn- 
ing his friends are about him, and they spend the day 
in discussing with him the question of the soul's im- 
mortality. In the course of the talk various little in- 
cidents of which the dramatist can make good use occur 
or are alluded to : as when, for example, Socrates is rep- 
resented as stroking the curly hair of his beloved dis- 
ciple Phaedo; and again when the jailer comes weeping 
to tell his illustrious prisoner that the hour of his death 
has struck, and Socrates, serene and unmoved, turns to 
his heart-broken companions with the remark, "How 
charming the man is ! " Then, with the rays of the setting 
sun falling upon him like the pointing hand of God, the 
wisest man of his age drinks the hemlock and sets forth 
on the high adventure called death. 

If the next Shakespeare should agree with his prede- 
cessor in thinking such a theme too sublime for dra- 
matic presentation, one's hope of seeing this great play 
written will be disappointed or indefinitely deferred. 
But meantime one may remind the Michael Angelos of 



igo THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

twentieth-century America that no theme has ever been 
considered too sacred for the painter to depict. An 
attempt has indeed been made to put on canvas the 
scene of the death of Socrates, but unfortunately the 
artist shared the prevalent illusion that Greek men were 
like stone statues, only less alive. When the predestined 
painter of this scene arrives, he will be one who recognizes 
that Athenian gentlemen of the fourth century B. C. 
were exactly like the most cultivated sons of the twen- 
tieth century of the Christian era. He will therefore 
seek his models not in the British Museum or the Louvre, 
or in the shop of an antique dealer, but in — let us say — 
the literary clubs of Boston or London, or in the Senate 
at Washington. 

But to our theme: 

It is well to bear in mind, when reading the words of 
Plato concerning immortality, that he was not confused 
by the mental muddle created in modern times by the 
attempt to furnish a substitute for it. He knew, what 
the unsophisticated consciousness has always known, 
that the immortality which men desire is personal or 
nothing. It means the continuance (with whatever 
development) of the self-conscious individual soul. If 
it is not this, it is not immortality. The attempt of 
Positivism to deny this, and at the same time to provide 
the same consolation, by talking about the incorporation 
of the (non-existent) soul into the Great Being Humanity, 
if taken seriously (and there actually are some people 
who take it seriously), is a strange piece of intellectual 
jugglery. It is like the construction sometimes placed 
upon the Apostles' Creed, according to which ''conceived 
of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary" means, 
''conceived of the carpenter Joseph, born of the married 



IMMORTALITY. A STUDY IN PLATO 19 1 

woman Mary"; and ''I believe in the resurrection of the 
body" means, "I deny the resurrection of the body, but 
I rather fancy that the soul may be immortal." 

I would not even seem to disparage that noble aspira- 
tion which is expressed by George Eliot in The Choir 
Invisible. ''To make undying music in the world," 
to *'be to other souls the cup of strength in some great 
agony," to leave to after- times ''the sweet presence of a 
good diffused, and in diffusion ever more intense," — this 
is the sole aim worthy of the life of man. But to call it 
immortality is to use language with reckless ambiguity. 
An influence is not a person; it is not a consciousness; and 
a personal consciousness is the only possible subject of 
the kind of life to which this desire relates. To anybody 
who longs for personal continuance, the surrogate ar- 
rangement offered by Positivism is a positive insult. 
If you do not beheve in conscious life after death, and 
some bereaved friend comes to you for consolation, be 
brave enough to tell what you really think. Do not say, 
*'I can offer you an excellent substitute," because you 
cannot. Do not imitate those vegetarian restaurants 
in London, where they give you a hash-up of beans and 
fried potatoes, and call it steak. Do not say in effect, 
"Of course you want to be assured that your friend is 
alive, and that you and he will meet again, whereas he is 
really dead and done for; but you can easily lull yourself 
into believing that it is very much the same as if he were 
still living." In other words, do not pretend that a 
figure of speech is a statement of fact. We can permit 
the poet to speak of "those immortal dead who live again 
in Kves made better by their presence," only upon the 
strict understanding that this is not to be offered as a 
consolation to anybody who is seeking the kind of com- 



192 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

fort of which this doctrine is a denial. Such persons 
need first to be weaned from their vain yearning, — vain, 
because the assurance they seek is unattainable, — and led 
up to that nobler but quite different faith to which George 
Eliot's spirit can appeal. 

Of Plato's attempt to find a rational basis for his belief 
in personal survival, Matthew Arnold speaks almost with 
asperity: ''By what futihties the demonstration of our 
immortality may be attempted is to be seen in Plato's 
Phaedo.^^ Mr. Arnold then proceeds to indulge in a 
futility of his own: — 

Man's natural desire for continuance, however little it may 
be worth as a scientific proof of our immortality, is at least a 
proof a thousand times stronger than any such demonstra- 
tion. The want of solidity in such argument is so palpable 
that one scarcely cares to turn a steady regard upon it at 
all.i 

It may be so. We may never be able to find, on either 
side of the question, arguments that will sustain one 
moment's steady regard; and yet the everlasting riddle 
will always continue to be propounded. Although we 
have no data which could convert our feeling of what is 
probable into a knowledge of what is actual, we shall 
continue to dispute about this subject, because we must; 
and after we have recognized the "futilities" of Plato 
and of Arnold for what they are, we shall proceed to 
invent fresh ones of our own. Those whose faith in 
immortality is shocked or shaken by Arnold's criticism 
may at least find comfort by remembering that nothing 
that Plato or anybody else, down to the most ranting 
^ Literature and Dogma, chap. xii. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 193 

revivalist or the most feeble-minded scancc-haunter, ever 
ofifered as a proof of immortality, can equal in futility the 
arguments advanced in recent times as proof that man 
is not immortal. When scientific *' philosophers" or 
their popularizers tell us that the human soul is ''a func- 
tion of the nervous system," or that ''the brain secretes 
thought as the Hver secretes bile," we feel that the wildest 
non-sequitur in the Phaedo is by comparison logical and 
rational. With people who can beheve that the subject 
is derived from the object; that the spirit is created by 
its instruments; that the knower is a product of a few of 
the items which he knows; — with such people it is dif- 
ficult to hold serious argument. One cannot but an- 
ticipate that they will shortly undertake, with a specially 
powerful microscope, to show us a little bit of human 
kindness, or a fragment detached from a chain of argu- 
ment. Why not, if thought is a secretion of the brain? 

If we are to attempt a serious discussion, worthy of the 
high mood of the Phaedo, we must begin by recogniz- 
ing the absolute mystery in the presence of which we 
stand, and which confronts us when we gaze within our- 
selves. We cannot to-day say more than was said nearly 
three hundred years ago by Sir Thomas Browne: "We 
are men, and we know not how." He is the victim of an 
illusion who thinks that the description of the develop- 
ment of the body which modern science gives us, is an 
explanation either of the body or of the mind. There 
are, strictly speaking, no explanations in science; there 
are only descriptions and correlations of the given. If I 
stand in spell-bound astonishment before the fact that 
I am the son of my father and the father of my son, my 
astonishment is not to be dispelled by a mere restate- 
ment of the fact of the relationship, however full of detail 



194 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

it may be. Now, science is little more than such a de- 
tailed restatement of facts, many of which are superfi- 
cially famiHar to common sense. Science can tell us 
much of the make of the world, but nothing of its making. 
To questions that begin with the word ^'How?" it can 
reply at great length; but to questions that ask "Why?" 
it has no answers. 

Men had marvelled, for example, at the mystery of 
creation. Then came science, substituting the word 
evolution for the word creation. What it meant thereby 
(as we saw in Chapter III) was that the force or forces by 
which observed changes in the world have come about, 
are inherent in the world, and not acting upon it from 
"outside." This, however, is only a convenient hypothe- 
sis, unproved and unprovable, but serviceable as a simpK- 
fication of practical problems. To those who have 
erected it into a complete system of mythology, the vir- 
tual meaning of which is that Evolution is the name of 
God, there is no mystery; but for the rest of us, who can- 
not so easily succeed in deluding ourselves with names, 
there is nothing for it but the frank recognition that all 
that was mysterious to Plato remains equally mysterious 
to us. The essence of the mystery is not any special 
collocation of particular facts, but the very possibility of 
there being such a thing as knowledge, — the possibility 
of the co-existence and connection of thought and thing, 
of the multiplicity of minds in relation with each other 
through a world which serves as their instrument of 
communication. 

But Man is magnificent as well as mysterious. We 
have been brow-beaten by the conclusions of physical 
science into thinking of him as merely one among the 
animals, subject to their vicissitudes and to the blind 



LAmORTALlTY: A STUDY IN PLATO 195 

play of uncontrollable forces. The old estimates of his 
dignity and greatness sound foolish and presumptuous 
to our ears. We are too modest to realize that our 
very ability to raise the question of our kinship with the 
lower animals is itself a proof of our essential differ- 
ence from them. This view, of course, is consistent 
with the fullest recognition of the descent of the body 
from animal ancestors. I am not in the least disputing 
the Darwinian argument on that side. But if we could 
shake ourselves free from the gross illusions of the ma- 
terialistic standpoint, we should find nothing strange or 
unwarrantable in that estimate which places man not 
among the animals but among the gods. The truth is 
under-stated rather than exceeded in those beautiful 
lines of Mr. Watson's: — 

We are children of splendour and flame, 

Of shuddering also, and tears; 
Magnificent out of the dust we came, 

And abject from the spheres. ^ 

The under-statement here lies in the possible implica- 
tion that the duality of man's nature intersects the line 
of cleavage between body and spirit, and that the spirit, 
or some part of it, came, like the body, out of the dust. 
To this extent Mr. Watson seems to side with the mate- 
riahstic biologists, whose whole procedure is vitiated 
through their mistaking of conditions for causes — an 
error which was so completely exposed by Plato in the 
Phaedo ^ that it ought never to be made again by any 
thinker claiming to be scientific. 

^ William Watson's Ode in May. 

2 ''I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other 
principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and 
other eccentricities, I might compare him to a person who began by 



196 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

It is refreshing and encouraging to turn from those 
biological inquiries which humiHate man by seeking his 
antecedents among the apes and in the dust, to that 
higher and truer account of him penned by Sir Thomas 
Browne. He speaks rhetorically of himself, but his 
words are true of all men: 

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to 
relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would 
sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count 
it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to 
die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm 
of my own frame that I cast mine eye on: for the other, I 

maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, 
but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my several 
actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is 
made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard 
and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and 
they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of 
flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are Hfted at their 
joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend 
my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture : that is 
what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking 
to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he 
would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to 
mention the true cause, which is, that the Athenians have thought fit 
to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right 
to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that 
these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or 
Boeotia, — by the Dog of Egypt! they would, if they had been guided 
only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the 
better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to 
undergo any punishment which the State inflicts. There is surely a 
strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, 
indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body 
I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of 
them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from the 
choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking." — 
§§ 98-99- 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 197 

use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for 
my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing 
only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I 
am above Atlas's shoulders. The earth is a point not only 
in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and 
celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circum- 
scribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the 
heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I 
take my circle to be above three hmidrcd and sixty. Though 
the number of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth 
not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, 
or little world, I find myself something more than the great. 
There is surely a piece of divinity in us; something that was 
before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. . . . 
He that understands not thus much hath not his intro- 
duction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of 
man.i 

The problem of immortality, then, is not whether man's 
body contains some rarefied physical essence which at 
death can rise from it like an exhalation and continue 
to subsist without it. We grant to the biologist that 
no part of the body survives; the resolution of the 
physical frame at death into its component solids, fluids 
and gases is complete. He has very kindly told us, in 
learned language, what we knew before. Upon the prob- 
lem with which we are concerned, his researches are 
inherently incapable of throwing any light whatever. 
Our quest is as to the fate of the essential man, who is 
non-physical and non-spatial; and our first question is 
whether he is also extra-temporal. 

There are, indeed, two ideas fused together in the or- 
dinary conception of immortality. That word is com- 

^ Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici, Pt. ii, § 11. 



igS THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

monly treated as synonymous with eternity. We speak 
indifferently of immortal life and of eternal life, and we 
do not usually trouble ourselves to inquire whether this 
procedure is legitimate. The two ideas should, however, 
be kept distinct. The one is the vague popular notion 
of indefinite continuance; the other has no relation to 
continuance. It is a qualitative, not a quantitative 
conception. The immortal Hfe of ordinary religious 
aspiration is simply a reproduction of the same type of 
existence that the phenomenal man passes through 
before death. It is an indefinite prolongation of that 
Hfe through endless time. It sets aside the question 
whether man is truly in time, or whether time is, so to 
speak, in man. 

Now one may, as a matter of faith or by logical neces- 
sity, but without any dogmatism, believe in an eternal 
spiritual order, and yet remain unconvinced as to im- 
mortality, or as to the possibility of a Hfe after death 
which should be something less than immortal. I have 
elsewhere pointed out that even a scientific proof (if 
such a thing were possible) that man continues to live 
after death would in no wise prove that he will Hve for 
ever.^ To beHeve in an eternal order is to believe that 
the spirit of man is now outside of time and above suc- 
cession. One may hold, with Kant, that time is a form 
of thought — one of those functions of the understanding 
by which, as he said, it ''makes nature." In that case, 
man does not begin and end in time, but time begins 
and ends in him. Or one may beHeve, with Bergson, 
that time should be expressed in terms of duration, 
which is not that of the body, but of that noumenal 

^ Criticisms of Life, chap, iv, p. 137. This argument was of course 
anticipated by Plato. See below, p. 211. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 199 

force by which all hving bodies are organized, and the 
fate of which is not involved in their vicissitudes. Ac- 
cording to Bergson's view, there is nothing with which 
the duration of man's life can be compared, except the 
universe itself in its totahty. We think we measure 
ourselves by units of a homogeneous medium called 
time. But in order to do this, we have to delude our- 
selves into thinking that we have performed the impos- 
sible conjuring-trick of objectifying the subject. It is 
only what William James calls the empirical ego, as 
distinguished from the pure ego, which can thus be 
measured: the me, not the I. The pure self overspans 
any succession which it measures, embracing both its 
ends; otherwise the measurement would be impossible. 
Now, in doing this we necessarily transform the suc- 
cession into a simultaneity. A period of time, if I am 
thus to deal with it, must become for my consciousness 
a unitary object. The fifteen years of the twentieth 
century which have thus far elapsed are gathered up 
in our memory into such a unity. The year 1901 and the 
year 191 5 co-exist in the mind. 

A simple way of bringing home the paradox involved 
in the idea of time is to divide time, as common sense 
always does, into past, present and future. We spring 
from the past; we Uve in the present; and we are continu- 
ally reaching forward into the future. But what and 
where is the past? It does not exist. And the future? 
It is to be, we say; but this is an indirect way of admitting 
that it also does not exist. Baffled, we seek to grasp at 
the present; but it proves as elusive as past and future. 
The word, as it leaves my Hps, is no longer present; it 
has slipped into the non-existent past. What then is 
the reality of this time, which is everywhere and nowhere, 



20O THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

which is always and never; of which two-thirds do not 
exist and the other third cannot be grasped? 

In an earlier chapter I attempted a distinction be- 
tween existence and reality which I must here recall 
to the reader's memory. Existence, I suggested, should 
be regarded as the purely intellectual category ; reality as 
the volitional. That which does not exist may yet be 
real. If so, its reaHty consists in the fact that it satisfies 
some inherent need of the spirit. All ideals are of this 
nature. Everybody can see, for example, that it would 
be absurd to say that justice exists; but nobody hesi- 
tates for a moment to declare that justice is intensely 
real. Or, if any pessimist should choose to deny this, 
I would take the liberty of reminding him that in the 
act of doing so he has affirmed the reaHty of injustice, 
which equally cannot be thought of as existing. 

Time, then, may without absurdity be called non- 
existent but real: so too may space and causaHty, — both 
of which ideas, when analyzed, are found to be as 
elusive as time. We differentiate the unbroken con- 
tinuum of the senses into an ordered universe by means 
of the intuition of space; and by means of that mental 
creation or rational function called time we succeed in 
distributing the world of events into an intelHgible se- 
quence. Past, present and future have no more existence 
apart from us than have the Hnes of latitude and longi- 
tude, which we draw on our maps, in the world which 
those maps depict. Like them, time is a creation of the 
mind to meet its own needs. 

Now the consequence of admitting this is the recogni- 
tion that the spirit of man, being outside of time, is 
outside of succession. It does not move forward to grasp 
the future; the stream of events flows towards it and is 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 20f 

absorbed in it. But the common idea of immortality, 
as we have seen, is simply that of indefinite succession. 
In these terms we continue to pose the problem, because 
the transcendent order of reality, to which the essential 
man belongs, is and must remain incomprehensible to us. 
It is not, however, inapprehensible. We cannot present 
it to ourselves in conceptual form, because (not being 
able to jump out of our skins) we cannot objectify the 
subject, the pure ego. But it is of this timeless reality 
that we should be thinking when we use the words 
eternity and eternal. 

Our intellectual difficulty in the matter is to some 
extent helped by poetic pictures, though even these 
are apt to be misleading. Shelley, in an inspired mo- 
ment, compared life to ''a dome of many-coloured glass" 
which " stains the white radiance of eternity." A Hebrew 
psalmist said of God, "A thousand years in thy sight are 
but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
night." ^ In the Fourth Gospel there is placed upon the 
lips of Christ the bold paradox, ''Before Abraham was, I 
am." ^ Now, in the strict sense, the words of the psahn- 
ist in reference to God are true of man. A thousand 
years in everybody's sight are but as yesterday when it 
is past. The comparison is not in respect of the duration 
of yesterday, but in respect of the simultaneity into 
which the thousand years, Hke yesterday, are fused, in 
order that they may become present as a unitary object 
to consciousness. So with the words of the Johannine 
Christ: they too are true of everybody. Man is before 
Abraham was, because in his consciousness is embraced 
the time-span from before the day of Abraham to the 
present moment. Time has no other assignable reality 

^ Ps. xc, 4. 2 John viii, 58. 



202 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

than as a constituent and instrument of consciousness. 
It is the duaHty of our nature — the fact that as objects 
we form part of the series which as subjects we create — 
that causes our confusion, breaking up the ''white radi- 
ance" into the many colours of the dome. 

We may think of eternity under the image of a ver- 
tical line, cutting across the horizontal line called time. 
At the point of intersection stands man, a member of 
both series; the only point at which there is in time the 
gleam of eternity. 

This notion of man as non-successive (whether in this 
life or after death) is, as I have admitted, inconceivable. 
But we know why it is so; and the inconceivable (as 
science has frequently demonstrated) is not the impos- 
sible. The only question is whether the notion is forced 
upon us by the logical analysis of our own nature and of 
the conditions of knowledge. If it is (as I believe to be 
the case), we cannot refuse to entertain it. In whatever 
direction thought proceeds, it always conducts us to the 
inconceivable. I would claim for the view here suggested 
that it is logically necessitated, is self-consistent and con- 
sistent with the data of experience; whereas the opinion 
which reduces the soul of man to phenomenal rank, 
regarding it as a product of an independent time-process, 
involves a series of gratuitous and unprofitable incon- 
ceivabilities. 

The futilities complained of by Arnold in the Phaedo 
are due not merely to the abstruse nature of the subject 
it discusses, but to the imperfection of Plato's dialectic, 
which belongs, as Professor Jowett reminds us, to the 
age before logic and psychology. Already, indeed, we 
have encountered the further difficulty, remarked by 
Simmias towards the close of the argument, which ''arises 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 203 

necessarily out of the greatness of the subject and the 
feebleness of man." The effort of Socrates to prove the 
pre-existence of the soul by means of the doctrine of 
ideas imparted before birth/ is one of the futilities. It is 
easy for us now to say, in Kantian language, that not 
exphcit knowledge, but only its presuppositions, are 
evolved by reason a priori, and to distinguish between 
the a priori and the innate. We cannot be satisfied by 
saving, with Cebes, that ''if you put a question to a 
person in a right way, he will give a true answer of him- 
self; but how could he do this unless there were knowledge 
and right reason already in him? " For we should be met 
with the retort that ''putting a question in a right 
way" means putting it in terms that contain the answer, 
and that to identify knowledge with "right reason" 
is to beg the whole question. We regard the knowledge 
developed by such interrogations not as reminiscent, 
but as a new creation, produced on the spot by the 
thinker through the normal operation of his rational 
powers. If knowledge could begin in the soul before 
birth, why should it not begin in this life? And if it can 
begin in this life, what need have we of the hypothesis 
of pre-existence to account for its origin? 

Nor can we do otherwise than accept Arnold's epithet 
as a true description of the argument by which Socrates 
seeks to prove that opposites are generated out of each 
other, and therefore that life is born of death. ^ That 
argument confounds succession with generation, and is 
thus an instance of the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc. 
His later attempt to demonstrate the existence of quali- 
ties out of relation, and to show that greatness and small- 
ness, oddness and evenness, are the causes of particular 

1 Phaedo, § 73. 2 /jj^,^ |J 70-72. 



204 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

things being great and small, odd and even, is, in similar 
fashion, a palpable hypostatization of mere words. In 
all this we see the great workman struggling with in- 
efficient tools. 

We cannot say, indeed, that the possibility of pre-natal 
existence falls with the collapse of Plato's argument. 
That doctrine is an h3^othesis of which we have no need, 
because we can, as we think, explain the facts of our 
present knowledge without invoking it. It remains con- 
ceivable that birth may be but an interruption of our 
Hfe, by which continuity is broken and consciousness 
becomes tangential to its former course. While recog- 
nizing this, however, we agree with Arnold that an 
argument which assumes it is a futiHty. It is an attempt 
to explain the unknown by the still-more-unknown. 

But the whole point of the Phaedo is missed if we 
do not see that its purpose, from beginning to end, is 
ethical rather than metaphysical. What Plato is inter- 
ested in is that quality of the soul by which it can reaHze 
its eternity. The notion of the prolongation of individual 
consciousness after death is for him confessedly a myth: 
that is, a guess. The epistemological and other consid- 
erations introduced by Socrates are altogether subordi- 
nate to the ethical purpose of the conversation. The key- 
note is struck at the beginning, in the answer of Socrates 
to the question why the philosopher desires death. It 
is because death liberates him from a thraldom from 
which, throughout his life, he has been trying to escape.-^ 

1 "If we would have pure knowledge of anything, we must be quit of 
the body, and the soul in herself must behold all things in themselves: 
then I suppose that we shall attain that which we desire, and of which 
we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom; not while we live, but after 
death, as the argument shows; for if while in company with the body 
the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow — 



IMMORTALITY. A STUDY IN PLATO 205 

The Socrates who here argues for the immortality of 
the soul is the same man who, before his judges, had 
taken the agnostic attitude. To them he had argued 
that whether death is a dreamless sleep or the entrance 
to a new life, it is in either case a good. Because the 
man whose soul is clothed with the armour of virtue is 
invulnerable to the shafts of chance, no evil can befall 
him, either in life or after death. His reconciliation to 
his lot is therefore not conditional upon a balancing of 
external goods against external ills. He has attained to 
that qualitative perfection which is the highest conceiv- 
able fruition even of an everlasting life. The production 
of a soul like his is the only end which could make an 
immortal Hfe desirable. Since its perfection is intensive, 
not extensive, it is independent of duration. Though 
it were manifested but for a moment, the spirit of Soc- 
rates is as great as it could be if it continued to ex- 
ist for ever; for, as Aristotle says, "it will not do to 
say that the eternity of the essential good makes it 
to be more good; for what has lasted white ever so 
long is no whiter than what lasts but for a day." ^ 
Plato's interest, Kke that of all truly religious moraHsts, 
is in the whiteness, not in its duration. The Phaedo 
is there not to prove that men are immortal, but to make 

either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or, if at all, after death. For 
then, and not till then, the soul will be in herself alone, and without the 
body. In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach 
to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the 
body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure 
until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the 
foolishness of the body will be cleared away, and we shall be pure and 
hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear 
light everywhere; and this is surely the light of truth. For no impure 
thing is allowed to approach the pure." — Phaedo, §§ 66-67. 
^Ethics, Book i, chap. 3. 



2o6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

them realize that they are eternal. They can in this 
life develop in themselves essential and substantive 
wisdom and goodness. These are, indeed, indestructible, 
and may persist in the individualized consciousness in 
which they are developed; but in any case they are the 
supreme values, for the sake of which alone an endless 
existence could be worth while. 

The primary purpose, then, of Socrates is to teach his 
followers to emancipate themselves from bondage to 
their bodily affections and desires. This he does by ex- 
hibiting, with unparalleled keenness of moral discrimina- 
tion, the difference between the prudential self-abnega- 
tion of the philistine and the truly ethical self-discipline 
of the enlightened lover of virtue.-^ The philistine, as 
he points out, forgoes one bodily pleasure in order that 
he may enjoy another. He is, in the seemingly paradox- 
ical words of Socrates, "temperate because he is intem- 
perate." Thus the man who abandons certain luxuries of 
drink or diet, not for the sake of the spiritual liberation 
which results, but in order that he may live the longer 
to gratify hunger and thirst, has made no progress in 
virtue at all. Even the man who acts bravely to escape 
death because he fears death, is, according to Socrates, 
"courageous only from fear." This is not a disparage- 
ment of prudential self-abnegation, except in so far as 
it makes self-evident the inferiority of such conduct to 
that of the philosopher. If I abandon one class of pleas- 
ures because there is another class of pleasures which 
I must have, my thraldom to pleasure at the end of 
the process is as complete as at the beginning. Such 
an exchange is the exchange of commerce, not of 
virtue: — 

^Phaedo, ^6S. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 207 

But in the true exchange there is a purging away of all 
these things, and temperance, and justice, and courage, and 
wisdom herself, are a purgation of them. And I conceive that 
the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were 
not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago 
that he who passed unsanctified and uninitiated into the 
world below will live in a slough, but that he who arrives 
there after initiation and purification will dwell with the 
gods. For '"many," as they say in the mysteries, ''are the 
thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics," — meaning, as I 
interpret the words, the true philosophers. In the number 
of whom I have been seeking, according to my ability, to 
find a place during my whole life; whether I have sought in a 
right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I 
shall truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself 
arrive in the other world: that is my belief.^ 

Thus the pursuit of virtue requires us first of all to 
discriminate between empirical goods and those qualita- 
tive goods of the soul which are eternal. The latter are 
substantive, whereas the former are only adjectival. 
This is what Emerson has in mind when he speaks of 
becoming "not virtuous, but virtue.'' With this doc- 
trine the Phaedo begins and ends; and the mainte- 
nance of it is the real purpose of the long, and somewhat 
unprofitable, discussion which intervenes between the 
two ethical affirmations. 

The utilitarian may be affronted by the suggestion 
that the self-abnegation which looks to future pleasure 
is not virtuous, and may declare that Socrates is advocat- 
ing an idle and purposeless asceticism. What other 
reason can there be, he may ask, for giving up drink, 
for reducing one's diet, for Hving in chastity, than the 

^ Phaedo, § 69. 



2o8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

maintenance or recovery of one's health and physical 
fitness? This is a perfectly natural question to be put 
in an age which has invented a new religion for the sole 
purpose of making the body healthful, — though, to be 
sure, that religion offers the bewildering paradox of 
denying the existence of the body as a means of securing 
its health. Our answer must be that health is good not 
only in itself, but also as a means to ends which are more 
important than it, and for the sake of which health it- 
self, and even life, must at need be sacrificed. It is these 
ends that Socrates has in view. The self-abnegation 
he inculcates is quite consistent with utilitarianism, 
unless the utilitarian can disprove the worth of the end 
sought. This, however, he cannot do; for the good that 
Socrates seeks is the realization of the inherent powers of 
the human spirit, which are hampered or frustrated by 
its slavery to bodily cravings. Now the unconditional 
acceptance of every rational creature 's claim to true self- 
realization is the intuition upon which utilitarianism 
reposes.^ 

The ascetics of the degenerate period of Christian 
history would have been horrified by the assertion that 
spiritual perfection is an inherent and inalienable attri- 
bute of man's nature which can be actualized in this 
life. Their attempt to placate the devil whom they 
mistook for God, by all sorts of insane and insanitary 

1 Cp. the discussion of the intuitional basis of Utilitarianism in Sidg- 
wick, Methods of Ethics, especially Book iii, chap. xiii. He there says, 
"There being ... no actual desire ... for the general happiness, the 
proposition that the general happiness is desirable cannot be in this way 
established : so that there is a gap in the expressed argument, which can, 
I think, only be filled by some such proposition as that which I have 
above tried to exhibit as the intuition of Rational Benevolence." — P. 388, 
seventh edition. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 209 

mortifications of the flesh, is a superstitious caricature 
of the Socratic discipline. For Socrates held that many 
kinds of bodily pleasures may be indulged in, provided 
one has so completely mastered the craving for them 
that it no longer hinders the development and the free 
functioning of one's mental and spiritual powers. We 
have seen ^ that he could drink deeper than any of his 
companions: but he was never drunk, and could go on 
with the hardest kind of thinking when the rest of the 
assembly were unable to stand or speak. 

The ultimate Greek ideal, to be sure, is the same as 
that of Christianity at its highest. Both Aristotle and 
Plato are convinced that the noblest state of man is that 
of contemplation. To see, with the eye of the soul, per- 
fect goodness, truth and beauty, as they are in their very 
nature and pure essence, and not as momentary gleams 
breaking through the darkness of the sense-world, — 
this is the Beatific Vision, and the long-sustained ac- 
tivity that conducts to it is the noblest pursuit open 
to man. It is not formally different from the ''end of 
man" as defined in the Westminster Confession: ''To 
know God and enjoy Him for ever." The real difference 
is that the Westminster Confession lost sight of the fact 
that God is nothing but Goodness, Truth and Beauty, 
whilst the Greek masters kept it always in mind. 

Nothing in the Phaedo is more captivating than the 
divine condescension of Socrates to the confusion and 
weakness of Simmias and Cebes, who in a very human 
fashion confess to the instinctive horror of death after 
they have admitted the force of arguments designed to 
prove the indestructibility of the soul. It is difficult to 
live long on the mountain-peaks of philosophic insight; 

1 Ante, p. 128, n. i. 



2IO THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and the two Thebans are ''haunted, Hke children, with 
a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may 
really blow her away and scatter her." Cebes, with a 
smile, demands that Socrates shall argue them out of 
their fears: "And yet, strictly speaking, they are not 
our fears, but there is a child within us, to whom death 
is a sort of hobgoblin." Long and hard is the discipline 
by which we can be emancipated from the irrational 
fears of that child within. Every natural craving prompts 
us to cling to the bodily life, to linger among ''the warm 
precincts of the cheerful day." In spite of our philo- 
sophic conviction of the spiritual nature of the soul, we 
yet have vague pictures of it as being "blown about the 
desert dust, or sealed within the iron hills." Socrates, 
using the language of accommodation, argues that it is 
only compounds which can be dissolved and scattered, 
but that the soul is single and simple, and therefore 
irreducible. He is here using a physical analogy — 
though without saying so. May we say that an irrational 
argument is legitimate for allaying an irrational terror? 
The fear admitted by Cebes assumes an altogether self- 
contradictory notion of the spirit. It supposes that the 
soul is in the body: that is, that it is material and spatial. 
How else could it be blown before the wind? 

Recovering from their terror, the two interlocutors 
proceed to test Socrates by offering further objections. 
Simmias urges that the soul is related to the body as the 
harmony to the lyre. He is promptly disposed of by 
Socrates with the retort that a harmony cannot be 
"prior to the elements which compose" it, whereas 
Simmias has already admitted that the soul exists before 
the body. Cebes suggests that, though the soul is more 
enduring than its physical instrument, there is no proof 



LM MORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 211 

that it may not cease to exist after it has worn out a num- 
ber of bodies: — 

The parallel which I will suppose is that of an old weaver, 
who dies, and after his death somebody says: He is not dead, 
he must be alive: and he appeals to the coat which he himself 
wove and wore, and which is still whole and undecayed. And 
then he proceeds to ask of someone who is incredulous, 
whether a man lasts longer, or the coat which is in use and 
wear; and when he is answered that a man lasts far longer, 
thinks that he has thus certainly demonstrated the survival 
of the man, who is the more lasting, because the less lasting 
remains. But that, Simmias, as I would beg you to observe, 
is not the truth; everyone sees that he who talks thus is 
talking nonsense. For the truth is, that this weaver, having 
worn and woven many such coats, though he outlived several 
of them, was himself outlived by the last; but this is surely 
very far from proving that a man is slighter and weaker than 
a coat. Now the relation of the body to the soul may be 
expressed in a similar figure; for you may say with reason that 
the soul is lasting, and the body weak and short-Hved in 
comparison. And every soul may be said to wear out many 
bodies, especially in the course of a long life. For if while 
the man is alive the body deliquesces and decays, and yet the 
soul always weaves her garment anew and repairs the waste, 
then of course, when the soul perishes, she must have on her 
last garment, and this only will survive her; but then again, 
when the soul is dead, the body will at last show its native 
weakness, and soon pass into decay. And therefore this is an 
argument on which I would rather not rely as proving that 
the soul exists after death. For suppose that we grant even 
more than you affirm as within the range of possibility, and 
besides acknowledging that the soul existed before birth, 
admit also that after death the souls of some are existing still, 
and will exist, and will be born and die again and again, and 
that there is a natural strength in the soul which will hold 



212 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

out and be born many times — for all this, we may be still 
inclined to think that she will weary in the labours of succes- 
sive births, and may at last succumb in one of her deaths, and 
utterly perish; and this death and dissolution of the body 
which brings destruction to the soul may be unknown to any 
of us, for no one of us can have had any experience of it: 
and if this be true, then I say that he who is confident in 
death has but a foolish confidence, unless he is able to prove 
that the soul is altogether immortal and imperishable. But 
if he is not able to prove this, he who is about to die will 
always have reason to fear that when the body is disunited, 
the soul also may utterly perish.-^ 

The charming subtlety of this argument makes it an 
admirable instrument for use against the too eager people 
who wish to find scientific proofs of a future life. The 
moral (or non-moral) root of their desire is usually no- 
thing but the unacknowledged and unexorcised fear of 
death. They have not risen to the standpoint of eternity. 
They want an assurance that the dreadful visitant is a 
good fairy in disguise. Convince them that even if the 
death of "this machine " is not a finality, yet their annihi- 
lation may be only postponed and will finally occur, and 
what comfort will the ghost-stories of the seance-room 
hold for them? Now, this refusal to rest satisfied with 
anything short of a positive assurance of immortality is 
due to a misunderstanding of our spiritual needs. It is 
not endless Hfe that we crave: it is spiritual perfection, 
irrespective of duration; eternity, not immortality. As 
soon as the eyes of the soul are opened and it understands 
its own needs aright, it ceases to be concerned with the 
question of its duration, and is absorbed in the problem 
of its deserving. 

1 Phaedo, §§ 87-88. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 213 

This is one of the points in which the ethical insight of 
Plato pierces deeper than that of the New Testament. 
Jesus, indeed, says but Httle of a life after death. When 
he mentions it, he does so in order to lay down a doc- 
trine of salvation by righteous deeds, which is in stark 
contradiction to the credal theory of the Church.^ St. 
Paul, beginning with the notion of bodily resurrection, 
rises by degrees to the thought of ethical renewal. In 
this life he becomes a partaker of Christ's resurrection, 
by having ''the same 7nind which was in Christ Jesus.'* 
But in general the Church has insisted upon that side 
of the Pauline doctrine which the Apostle has in common 
with the apocalyptic Judaism of his time. Even to-day, 
there is much more discussion in the Church over the 
supremely unimportant question whether the body of 
Jesus left the grave alive, than over the means of attain- 
ing to that quality of character which makes the ques- 
tion of resurrection and continuance insignificant. The 
teaching of the Church should be that men may beHeve 
as their own judgment dictates about the question of 
personal immortality, but that they ought to rise above 
the desire for it. If it is to be, our concern should 
be to be worthy of it; but if not, our concern is the 
same. 

The last conversation of Socrates with his friends 
closes with the great myth of the Underworld, in which 
the ethical intuitions are reduced to pictorial form. At 
death, the genius of each soul carries it to its appropriate 
place in the heart of the earth, where it is judged accord- 
ing to its deeds. The indifferent characters are carried 
from the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, there to 

^ Matt. XXV, 31 ff. 



214 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

dwell in purgatorial penance until they deserve absolution 
from their sins. Afterwards they obtain the reward of 
their good deeds: 

But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the 
greatness of their crimes — who have committed many and 
terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the 
like — such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable 
destiny; and they never come out} 

Lesser criminals are plunged for a year in the Tartarean 
flames, after which they too pass to the purgatorial lake, 
there to remain "until they obtain vaercy from those whom 
they have wronged: for that is the sentence inflicted on 
them by their judges. '^ Those who have lived holy 
lives, and have duly purified themselves with "philo- 
sophy,'^ "live henceforth altogether without the body, 
in mansions fairer far than these, which may not be 
described." 

The fact that the two highest systems of ethics thus 
far evolved — the Platonic and the Christian — have both 
taught a doctrine of eternal punishment, is exceedingly 
interesting. Neither teaches, indeed, the barbaric doc- 
trine of Tertullian, Augustine, and the other perverters 
who degraded Christianity into mediaeval CathoHcism. 
Neither attaches this tremendous penalty to error of 
belief or to the misfortune of not having heard some true 
doctrine or experienced some magical sacrament which 
could have averted it. Both insist that only unrighteous 
deeds, and nothing else, can incur the dire judgment. 
Yet, even so, the myth remains shocking to us, until we 
divine the truth which it is meant to express. This is the 
deep sense which the greatest seers — Plato and Jesus — 
^ Phaedo, § 113, ad fin. 



IMMORTALITY: A STUDY IN PLATO 215 

had of the qualitative degradation of the soul through 
evil deeds. Those who go into Tartarus for ever are the 
incurable. They are not sent thither by the arbitrary 
fiat of any judge. Through their own acts they have 
become incapable of any other destiny. If the good that 
man can attain in this life is an eternal one, then we may 
surely say (in myth) that the necessary consequence of 
its deliberate forfeiture is also eternal. The wilful loss 
of any opportunity for spiritual self-realization is an 
"eternal punishment." The doctrine is in this sense 
true, even though there be no life after death. 

Plato ends as he began — not with metaphysical specu- 
lations, but with the ethical application of the whole 
argument: — 

Wherefore I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul, 
who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body 
as alien to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has 
followed after the pleasures of knowledge in this life; who has 
adorned the soul in her own proper jewels, which are tem- 
perance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth. 
In these arrayed, she is ready to go on her journey to the 
world below, when her time comes. 1 

This is the thing that is more important than im- 
mortality. The yearning for that is commonly (though 
not necessarily, and not always) a disguised desire to 
escape death. But, in the words of the Apology, "the 
difficulty is not to avoid death, but to avoid unright- 
eousness." To him who cares only for that, the per- 
sonal interest of the question of life after death is 
destroyed. 

The strongest inducement offered in the Phaedo to 
^ Sections 1 14-15. 



2i6 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

belief in immortality is not any of its arguments, but the 
character of Socrates himself. He is so transcendently 
great in the hour of his freely chosen doom that he creates 
(as Jowett has said) ''in the mind of the reader an im- 
pression stronger than could be derived from arguments 
that such a one, in his own language, has in him ' a prin- 
ciple which does not admit of death.'" It is hard to 
resist the feeling that the final destruction of such a per- 
sonahty would represent a sort of suicide of the universe — 
through the destruction of its noblest possible manifesta- 
tion. We fall back, accordingly, on the intuition that if 
Socrates is not immortal, he is something better than 
immortal: he is eternal. His spirit lived again in Plato 
and Aristotle, and in lesser degree in all whom they have 
inspired. In the measure in which it lives in us, we shall 
rise with him above the fear of death and the craving for 
endless life, into the fairer mansion that is eternally open 
to the soul which is adorned in its own proper jewels. 

Yet to the end we must be content to wait and wonder 
whether the personal self-consciousness that was in him, 
and that which is in us, retains its selfhood and con- 
tinues to live and act after this scene closes. The 
patient Sphinx disdains our questioning: 

We ask and ask : thou smilest, and art still, 
Out-topping knowledge. 



CHAPTER VIII 

RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 

Religion is an inexpugnable fact of human life. At 
times it seems to sway with resistless power the con- 
sciousness of individuals and the destinies of States and 
empires; at other times, again, its hold on men and 
poHties seems almost ended. The strife of new philo- 
sophies, the emergence of convictions based on changing 
knowledge as to the make of the world, the ambitions of 
kings and *' fierce democracies," the shifting of human 
attention from the gods to the economic forces that 
condition daily life — all these things by turns drive 
religion from the foreground of the collective conscious- 
ness; and at first glance this repression seems identical 
with extinction. It is not so in truth, however. The 
forces of religion are but driven underground, whence 
they again emerge — for another time, if not within the 
life-span of the generation that has banished them — in 
new outbreaks of destroying and creating activity. 

We five in such a period of the seeming extinction of 
rehgion to-day. Here, as in every European country, 
except perhaps Spain and Russia, other interests are 
usurping its old-time supremacy. The collective minds 
of nations are given up to secular concerns. In nation 
after nation Churches are being disestabHshed. New 
commonwealths are arising which omit the name of God 
from their constitutions, and which exclude themselves — 

as this country did from the first — from the right and 

217 



2l8 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

power to ''make any law respecting an establishment of 
religion." Thus more and more religion is conceived of as 
the personal and private affair of individuals, who may in 
its interest organize themselves into voluntary societies, 
but who may not demand for it national recognition. It 
is not felt to have any fundamental or organic connection 
with the Hfe and destiny of nations and States, and these 
as such are held to have no right to estabhsh, endow or 
assume responsibihty for any Church or Churches. 

I do not believe that a State Church or Churches, in 
the sense in which such Churches are established in 
England and Germany, should be set up in this country. 
The purpose of the present chapter is not to plead for a 
State Church, but to draw attention to the relation of 
religion to nationality, in the behef that by a correct 
understanding of the actual facts of Hfe religion will be 
humanized and nationality spiritualized. The Churches 
should become aware of their national function, and the 
nation of its religious function. Only so is the recon- 
ciliation of our spiritual enmities and the attainment of 
our ideal national destiny possible. Such, at least, is the 
thesis which I shall now attempt to establish. 

It remains to be decided, by reference to the hard logic 
of experience, whether the exclusion of an inevitable and 
deep-seated interest of the spirit of man from the purview 
of the national consciousness is expedient, or even per- 
manently possible. We cannot bar out religion from 
the sphere of the common Hfe simply by declaring that it 
ought to be so excluded. If religion be in natural fact a 
force co-extensive with nationality, and vital to the 
normal and efhcient functioning of commonwealths, then 
no antipathy of individuals to it, and no desire on the 
part of statesmen to humiliate or destroy Churches, can 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 219 

prevent such an irrepressible force from sooner or later 
reasserting itself and compelling its recognition at the 
hands of governments. "Things," says the wise truism, 
''are what they are, and their consequences will be what 
they will be." We have seen many times in history how 
kings and parties have been forced, against their will, to 
recognize principles which they hated, and to act in their 
legislation upon doctrines which with their lips they 
denied and denounced. Thus it has been that for more 
than fifty years both the great political parties in Eng- 
land have been legislating upon communistic principles, 
which, in their theoretical formulation, are repudiated 
and anathematized by the leaders of those parties. Her- 
bert Spencer was unquestionably right in asserting, in 
TJie Man versus the State, that English Liberalism had 
undergone a complete change of principle in the middle 
decades of the nineteenth century. Measures animated 
by the fundamental spirit of socialism are being passed 
every year by Liberal and Conservative Governments, 
whose members occupy their leisure hours in preaching 
and writing eloquent denunciations of socialism and all 
its works. Since the war began, the English Cabinet has 
done a hundred things which in times of peace, when 
Socialists demanded them, had been declared visionary 
and impossible. Thus, too, in this country it has come 
about that a President and party whose political tradition 
and personal convictions bind them to Rousseau's 
Contrat Social theory of society — to the upholding of 
the rights of individual States and the restriction of the 
functions of the Federal Government — are daily driven 
to action destructive of that theory, because implicitly 
affirming the illimitable authority of the central Govern- 
ment over all constituent parts of the nation. 



220 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The lesson of these and similar incontrovertible facts 
is plain for all to read. No political theory^ no constitution 
and no legislation which are not truly in harmony with the 
nature of things can endure. The personal desires and 
antipathies of men and nations must sooner or later be 
subordinated to the intractable realities of existence, or 
else those men and nations will suffer shipwreck. 

One of these realities is the natural and inevitable 
connection between religion and nationality. The his- 
toric fact of the continuous interaction and interdepend- 
ence between nations and Churches was an inevitable 
outcome of the spiritual nature and social exigencies of 
man. It was not an arbitrary result of the ambitions or 
interests of kings and priests. The greatness of States 
has waxed and waned step by step with the waxing and 
waning of religion as an ethical and nation-moulding 
force. The strength of kingdoms and commonwealths 
has never lain primarily in their economic or miHtary 
resources; but their control of these things was itself an 
outgrowth of that ideahstic patriotism which is a vital 
expression of religion. The internal decay of the latter 
has always, and necessarily, preceded and caused the 
decline of the former; and never has any nation recovered 
from economic crisis or from military or political over- 
throw except as its people have been ideally bound 
together in devotion to its spiritual and temporal 
ends. 

Religion, moreover, has demonstrated itself to be the 
only force which can ensure the resurrection and im- 
mortality of nationhood after a body politic has been 
crucified by alien powers. Thus was it with ancient 
Judaism, and thus is it in modern Ireland. The unifica- 
tion of Italy in the nineteenth century was effected only 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 221 

when the sentiment voiced by Mazzini, that ''Italy is 
itself a religion," became dominant in the breasts of her 
patriotic sons. In medicTval Germany, while there was 
no poHtical or economic unity, religion proved itself to be 
a force that bound all Germans together; and that 
idealism which brought about the political unification of 
Germany in the eighteen-seventies was in its essence as 
much religious as poUtical or militaristic. Even to-day, 
the Kaiser's fantastic claim to be the representative and 
vicegerent of God expresses and answers to a sentiment 
deeply rooted in the nation over which he rules. He is, 
to those whose vision is not distorted by occultistic 
theories, and who have learned to interpret facts ex- 
pressed in theological language at their sociological value, 
visibly as much the pontifex maximus as the imperator of 
Germany. 

In England, there have taken place within the last two 
centuries a gradual transference of the prerogatives of 
the monarchy to the Cabinet, and through it indirectly 
to the electorate; and a virtual extinction of the Estab- 
lished Church as a national force. It has not, however, 
been generally perceived that these changes have approx- 
imately corresponded with an assumption by the State 
of functions hitherto considered exclusively religious and 
ecclesiastical. The identity of purpose and result be- 
tween many things now done by the State and things 
formerly done by the Church will be clear to all who are 
not hypnotized by names. For the rite of baptism 
(which meant sociologically the recognition and assump- 
tion of responsibility for each new individual life by the 
community) is now substituted registration by the 
State; and even those who most bitterly resented com- 
pulsory baptism find nothing objectionable in the coer- 



2 22 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

cion exercised by the State in the matter of registration. 
The reason is that men are never conscious of constraint 
or resentful of compulsion in things which they see to be 
of prime social necessity. This in the case of registration 
is obvious to them; in the case of baptism, the very same 
necessity was concealed by the supernaturaHstic impli- 
cations of the sacrament. 

In the same way, even among the bitterest opponents 
of compulsory ecclesiastical marriage, none save extreme 
anarchists are found to object to compulsory civil mar- 
riage; and this again for the reason that they perceive 
in the latter an absolute need, arising from the nature of 
things and the organic structure of human society. This 
it was, and not the alleged supernaturaHstic institution 
of monogamy, which explained and justified the enforced 
matrimonial ceremony of the Church; and the decline of 
the Church in the loyalty and reverence of men did not 
and could not abrogate the natural necessity in response 
to which the Church had functioned. 

Yet more striking is the assent, even of the most rigor- 
ously anti-religious and anti-ecclesiastical thinkers, to 
the establishment of universal and compulsory education 
by modern States. For fully fourteen centuries, the 
Church had been the only educator of Europe. In the 
main, its functioning in that capacity was lamentably 
inefficient; yet by the common consent of men and na- 
tions it was recognized as the natural and rightful de- 
positary of this national responsibility. The Church's 
monopoly of education, and the fact that "instruction'* 
was synonymous with '^religious instruction," is testi- 
fied to by the unerring evidence of language, which pre- 
serves to this day the tradition identifying a clerk with 
a clericus. Throughout English history, until recent 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 223 

times, a man who could read and write was thereby en- 
titled to certain legal privileges, known as '* benefit of 
clergy." The decline of the traditional Church has 
synchronized precisely with the rise of the demand that 
the function of educator should be assumed by the State. 
It is interesting to observe, moreover, that the pressure 
of necessity is forcing the most anti-ecclesiastical of 
modern States to transform their educational codes from 
mere vehicles of the rudiments of ''secular" knowledge 
into media for the imparting of moral truth and for the 
awakening and guidance of idealistic aspirations. This 
process is taking place before our eyes to-day in America 
and France, and has already gone far in England. 

The contention, then, is that — since things do not lose 
their identity when they undergo a change of name — all 
modern States are in fact Churches, at least to the extent 
to which they assume and discharge the historic func- 
tions of Churches. The continuity of these modern 
national and civic undertakings with those of the medi- 
aeval Church could be demonstrated even down to details 
too minute to fall within the scope of the present volume. 
For example, no student can fail to perceive the socio- 
logical identity between the ecclesiastical conditions for 
ordination and the tests of knowledge and character 
imposed by modern States on all candidates for the 
teaching profession, and upon magistrates and other 
functionaries who are empowered to perform marriages, 
to register births and deaths, to hear confessions of sin 
(albeit in the law-court instead of the church) , to impose 
penances, and to remit or retain the sins confessed by 
or proved against the delinquents with whom they deal. 

If, then, it be the State which celebrates our sacra- 
ments and acts as our teacher, substituting a nurture 



224 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and admonition on behalf of its own ideals and enduring 
interests for the traditional ''nurture and admonition 
of the Lord," it necessarily follows that the State to-day 
is in so far a Church. 

It is true that States do not presume to interest them- 
selves in the life of individual citizens after death, or in 
the precise details of their theological beliefs. Yet they 
do take enormous pains to produce such conduct, and 
even such beliefs, in their citizens as shall secure the im- 
mortality of the nations whose brain and soul they are. 
The sociological student can clearly see that the ancient 
insistence of Christendom on theological orthodoxy and 
uniformity of creed was actually, if unconsciously, mo- 
tived by the same social necessity which to-day leads the 
United States to prohibit anarchists and polygamists 
from entering her borders, which in recent years led 
France to imprison Gustave Herve for preaching a 
*' strike against war" among the conscripts of her army, 
and which forced England, not long ago, to compel the 
resignation of a Minister of War who had shown signs 
of tolerating in the military caste opinions and conduct 
destructive of the army's usefulness as an organ of the 
Government. 

Thus the actual reason why freedom of theological 
opinion is tolerated in modern nations is because uni- 
formity in such opinion is no longer held to be essential 
to national safety and stability. Of any behefs which, 
if diffused and acted on by large masses of men, would 
result in the overthrow of government and the destruc- 
tion or even the serious imperilling of the nation, modern 
States are by natural necessity as intolerant as were 
mediaeval ones of theological heterodoxy. Australia, for 
example, has of late years coerced Quakers to violate 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 225 

their consciences by enlisting in her conscript army. Her 
procedure may indeed be unjustifiable; but it was un- 
mistakably prompted by the same motive which caused 
the Roman Empire to insist on Christians paying rever- 
ence to the statues of its deified emperors, which in- 
duced the Catholic Church to persecute all deviators 
from its accepted formulae, and which led the English 
Government, after the Restoration of 1660, to make 
the taking of Holy Communion according to the An- 
ghcan rite a test for admission to civil and political 
offices. 

The argument thus far set forth needs justifying and 
developing by two further considerations. The first 
is, that not merely is the modern State in truth a Church, 
but that all nations, as such, have always been Churches. 
The second is, that the modern nation is dangerously 
inefficient on the spiritual side by reason of its unaware- 
ness of its true nature. No society can discharge any 
task with the attainable maximum of efficiency if it be 
unconscious of the real nature and end of the activities 
in which it is engaged. 

That nations have always been Churches is a proposi- 
tion which will be rejected as self-evidently absurd only 
by those who hold that religion is exclusively engaged 
with the supernatural. Whoever admits that the func- 
tion of religion has been, at least in part, to inculcate 
standards of conduct necessary for the elevation of hu- 
man society in this life, must admit that it has been to 
this ^extent an important auxiliary to secular govern- 
ments. Nor can it be denied, in view of many well-known 
facts of sociology and history, that the special standards 
of conduct which religion dictated and sanctioned were 
always those desired by the relatively far-sighted few in 



226 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

whom the tribal or national consciousness resided, and 
to whom was committed the working out of the common 
destiny. The almost universal combination in early 
societies of regal and sacerdotal duties in the same person 
is an illustration of this fact. Where we find the offices 
differentiated, there is nevertheless complete interde- 
pendence between the royal and priestly functionaries. 
If the king is not the head of the Church, then the Church 
is, so to speak, the head of the king. The priest is the 
king-maker, if the king is not the priest-maker; and 
either state of the facts sufficiently testifies to the socio- 
logical identity between religion and nationality. 

The history of the ancient Jews, in which these facts 
are incontestable, was by no means so exceptional as it is 
commonly supposed to have been. In many other com- 
munities it was equally an essential part of good citizen- 
ship for a man to worship the gods believed in by the 
State. So much was this the case in ancient Greece that 
Socrates, as we have seen, was condemned and executed 
for alleged disbelief in the accepted deities of his city. 

Now, what these typical and familiar facts signify 
is that tribal gods and national religions have never been 
anything but the objectification and crystallization of 
whatsoever ideals and standards of conduct were held to 
be necessary to national well-being, stability and per- 
manence. To worship no gods at all meant, or was taken 
to mean, indifference to or contempt for the national 
code of morality. To worship alien gods was equivalent 
to treason. An ancient Jew who indulged in the sensuous 
polytheism of neighbouring tribes was acting in a way 
which, if universalized, would have involved the annihi- 
lation of the Jewish national consciousness, through the 
absorption of the Hebrew people in other nations. Hence 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 227 

the first Commandment/ and the denunciations of idol- 
atry by prophets and lawgivers. And in like manner, 
contempt for the gods of Athens was punished because 
to the Athenians it meant contempt for the laws of 
Athens. 

A nation, in truth, is never a mere accidental aggre- 
gation of persons born in a given geographical area; nor 
is it merely a unit of economic, political or military life. 
That which is above and beyond all these things, and 
indeed determines their evolution, is what New Yorkers 
humorously declare Boston to be: "sl state of mind." 
That is, a nation is a social unit animated by conscious or 
unconscious common interests and by an intelligent or 
instinctive devotion to common ideal ends. It is more 
than the arithmetical sum of its inhabitants at any 
moment, for it is the historic spirit which has begotten 
each of its members, and which causes those mental and 
spiritual peculiarities in them which differentiate them 
from all other peoples. It is that Universal — in the 
Aristotelian if not in the Platonic sense — which they 
individually embody and illustrate. 

England, for example, is the creator of all Englishmen. 
She is the source of the deepest selfhood of each of them — 
of their language and modes of thought, and even of the 
wholly unconscious presuppositions which regulate all 
their thinking and all their deeds. That Englishmen in 
general, like the citizens of most other nations, are un- 

^ It must not be forgotten that the Pentateuchal decalogues are not 
"monotheistic" in any metaphysical or philosophic sense. The phrase 
mistranslated in the English versions (Deut. vi, 4) to read "Hear, O 
Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord," really means, "Hear, O Israel, 
Yahwe is our God, Yahwe alone." It is thus consistent with the first 
Commandment, which admits the existence of other gods by prohibiting 
their worship. 



228 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

aware of this fact, proves nothing against it. As Seeley — 
the one great modern English philosopher of religious 
nationahsm — has pointed out, we are commonly un- 
conscious of the pressure of the atmosphere which we 
breathe; yet that atmosphere is the most omnipresent 
and includible fact of our experience. And if the truth 
of one's vital and organic dependence upon one's nation 
is hidden from the stay-at-home native, it nevertheless 
becomes speedily apparent to any thoughtful man who 
travels abroad. The first impression one gets on landing 
in America, for instance, is that it is not these swarming 
millions of people, with their obvious differences from all 
other speakers of the EngKsh tongue, who make America, 
but that it is America which has made them. The nation 
is the elan vital, the brooding Oversoul, which engenders 
the individual soul of each citizen. 

To be sure, the universal humanity in all men is one 
and the same, just as, no doubt, the pigments used by 
the painters of Renaissance Italy were identical with 
those used by the artists of the Flemish school. But 
this uniform viscous medium is manipulated and dis- 
tributed by the soul of each nation into forms that differ 
from each other as much as the pictures of the Flemish 
school differ from those of the Italian. Or, to take an- 
other illustration, it is undeniable that the sounds and 
letters which make up the French language are the same 
as those into which English is analyzable, and both 
tongues are regulated by identical principles of gram- 
matical logic. Yet the striking fact about these two 
languages is not their similarity, but their unlikeness. 
So is it with a man begotten and born of the pervading 
historical soul called England, as compared with one 
engendered by that other overarching spiritual unity 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 229 

whose name is China. The two men are compact of the 
same physical organs, which in both cases prefigure the 
same functions and demand the same psychic satis- 
factions. The synthesis of primal instincts is the same 
in each, and both possess the same framework of rational 
and extra-rational mentality. Yet the two are stamped 
and sundered by the entire difference of history, cir- 
cumstance and ideal aspiration between England and 
China for two thousand years. A human being, at any 
given moment, is psychologically definable as a system 
of impulses in unstable equilibrium; but the special 
character and direction of these impulses is in every 
case due to the fact of his affiliation with one par- 
ticular reservoir of living national tradition, rather than 
another. 

The most significant and precious gift, then, of any 
nation to its children consists of the super-temporal 
group-consciousness embodied in its laws, its ideals, 
its art and literature, and its proverbial wisdom. Yet 
not even in these characteristic expressions does a nation 
truly live. The essence of any commonwealth is that 
spirit in it which creates these things, which proclaims 
itself not only in positive laws and institutions but also 
in the impulse of innovators and reformers. When a 
people lives by a borrowed religious creed, that creed 
is inevitably modified in its social application by the 
total psychic atmosphere with which it becomes blended. 
Thus in pre-Reformation Europe, despite the cosmopo- 
litanism of the Church, Catholicism uttered itself in the 
different countries in definitely individualized mintings. 
GalHcanism, Hke Anglicanism, was a special incarnation 
of the common spiritual energy of the Continent. And 
to-day an orthodox Jew from Russia is different from 



230 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

an English orthodox Jew not merely in physical type, 
but in his whole scale of moral and spiritual values, and 
in his conception of the possibilities and impossibiHties 
of personal and social achievement. All Enghshmen— 
Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Jews and free thinkers 
— are immensely more alike than different, and are 
characterized far more by the fact of their nationahty 
than by their theological belief. There is actually more 
in common between an English Catholic and an English 
Agnostic than between an English and an Italian Cath- 
olic. If you meet an American in any city of Europe, 
you shall recognize him at once as an American, but 
never (unless he tells you) as an EpiscopaHan, a Metho- 
dist or a Mormon. So much more are men quahfied 
and characterized by their nationality than by their 
theological creed. The influence of nationahty is so 
pervasive and includible that in any crisis it grinds to 
powder all the barriers of class and philosophy by which 
men separate themselves from their fellows. 

Thus history and experience abundantly prove the 
truth of the contention that nationality is a spiritual 
and psychic rather than a physical fact. A nation is 
ordinarily characterized by its occupation of a given 
geographical area, as well as by unity and continuity of 
consciousness through time. The former is necessary 
to its efficient functioning; but the latter alone is essen- 
tial to its continued existence. There are many cases on 
record of the break-up and disappearance of nations 
through the dissipation of conscious spiritual unity. The 
extinction of ancient commonwealths, such as Assyria, 
Persia, Egypt, and Greece, does not mean that the people 
constituting them were ever annihilated. It means 
only that the unified consciousness which had expressed 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 231 

itself in their laws, religion, art, and customs was de- 
stroyed. The physical representatives of all of them 
are still with us, and for the most part are still occupying 
their ancient territory. But that common consciousness, 
that general will, which in Egypt built the Pyramids and 
wrote the Book of the Dead, is gone. The Greeks of 
to-day, despite some blending, are the authentic physical 
descendants of the contemporaries of Pericles and Soc- 
rates; yet they can scarcely be called the same nation. 
Centuries of alien dominance brought about the dis- 
integration of that consciousness which had expressed 
itself in the Parthenon, in the Acropolis, and in the 
philosophy and drama which were the fountain heads 
of European thought and literature. Under favourable 
circumstances, no doubt, ''the world's great age begins 
anew, the golden years return"; and the development 
which the Battle of Navarino inaugurated in 1827 ex- 
presses at least the possibility of a resurrection of that 
ancient unity of ideal and purpose. But the very need 
of a resurrection testifies to the death which preceded. 
On the other hand, we have in the case of the Jews 
an instance of the preservation of nationality without 
territorial unity or poHtical autonomy. Unique as this 
instance is, there is nothing mysterious in it — nothing, 
that is, that cannot be traced to adequate social causes. 
The weakness and constant peril of the Jewish poUtical 
State, surrounded as it was by powerful and ambitious 
neighbours, had from the first produced an uncommon 
intensification of the sense of spiritual unity and ideal 
loyalty among the Hebrew people. When their crisis 
came, and they were politically overthrown and dis- 
persed about the world, their statesmanship deliberately 
set itself the task of devising instruments for the preser- 



232 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

vation of their conscious unity, — instruments which 
should be independent both of territorial and of po- 
litical sovereignty. How this scheme was carried out 
can be seen in part in the book of Ezekiel, the later Old 
Testament writings, and some of the Apocrypha. Jeru- 
salem remained, indeed, as it still does, the centre of 
Jewish hope, aspiration, and devotion; but the necessity 
for personal attendance there was obviated. Seeley has 
well remarked that it was ''by the waters of Babylon" 
that Jewish nationality was transformed into Judaism. 
The hateful persecutions which from of old have afSicted 
the Jews in so many alien lands, were motived by the 
obstinate resistance of this people to assimilation. Their 
resistance was rendered possible by the highly articu- 
lated system of symbolism and family rehgious ob- 
servance, which ensured the continuity of their group- 
consciousness, and made the old conmiands against 
exogamy and against the worship of alien gods into 
effectual motives in the breasts of the scattered Jewish 
families. So long as their intense awareness of their 
separation from all other peoples, their feeling of identity 
with their fellow Jews throughout the world, and their 
hope of restoration to their old territory and to national 
sovereignty remained intact, it was impossible for them 
to become absorbed into the nations among which they 
lived. Now this sense of separateness was kept alive 
by two factors only: first, their religious system; and 
secondly, the very persecution which, in resentment 
of their divided loyalty, sought to end it. In so far as 
in modern countries, like England and America, persons 
of Jewish descent are forgetting or repudiating their 
origin and the loyalties prompted by it, this is visibly 
due to change of creed, and to their admission in such 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 233 

countries to full equality with their non-Jewish fellow- 
citizens. 

To sum up, then: Nationality may be destroyed with- 
out the loss of territorial unity. Or it can survive despite 
this loss. When it does, its survival is due to the per- 
sistence of national ideals and the resulting consciousness 
of unity of inlieritance and goal. 

The importance of a true doctrine of nationality and 
of its connection with religion is demonstrated by the 
experienced dangers incident to a misunderstanding of 
these tremendous forces. To contend, as I have done, 
that religion and nationality are in large measure iden- 
tical is not in the least to imply that either rehgion or 
nationality is in every case a good and admirable thing. 
This I would request the reader to bear clearly in mind, 
since the unfamiliar argument I am presenting will en- 
counter his prejudice if he forgets it, or forgets that I am 
aw^are of it. Either religion or nationality, or both, may 
be good, bad, or indifferent; savage or civilized; rational 
or mythological. National patriotism may be consistent 
with and conducive to true humanitarianism and the es- 
tablishment of universal peace and fraternity. It may, 
on the other hand, be a menace to these ideals. If it is 
exclusive, and connotes hatred of other nations, or if it 
aims at the domination of the world, poKtically or spirit- 
ually, by a single people, it becomes the most mischievous 
of all forms of insanity. Religion, too, is not a special 
kind of consciousness, but a special mode or direction of 
the same consciousness which functions in other spheres 
of human interest. If it fosters an exclusive nationahsm, 
or if it is so absorbed in extra-mundane hopes as to induce 
neglect of the spiritual opportunities of the present life, 
it also becomes a menace to the interests of humanity. 



234 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The necessity of a right understanding of these great 
psychic forces has been vividly brought home to us by 
the unprecedented disaster of the European War. Mod- 
ern sentiment had for years been growing obHvious to 
the indestructible force of national loyalty, and had 
mistakenly supposed that the development of the means 
of world-wide intercommunication had inaugurated an 
era of cosmopoHtanism. This was a dangerous blunder. 
The machinery which made possible the fulfilment of 
national ambitions was supposed to have rendered im- 
possible the perpetuation of the spirit which created it. 
The interpretation, also, of human Hfe in terms of mo- 
tives controlled exclusively by economic interest had pro- 
duced the gigantic illusion that national patriotism was 
weakened and on the way to becoming extinct. 

Now there are many to-day who in their humanitarian- 
ism loathe the idea of patriotism or nationalism, just as 
there are many who in their detestation of supernatural- 
ism turn their backs upon every actual and possible 
form of religion. To such thinkers I would merely urge 
for the moment that it is of no use to ignore a fact simply 
because one does not like it. The most stupendous fact 
of history, and especially of the history that is to-day 
in the making, is the indestructible and gigantic force 
of national solidarity and loyalty, even in those who had 
mistakenly imagined themselves to have outgrown it. 

What, for example, is the explanation of the alleged 
collapse of Socialism at the outbreak of the present war? 
It was not a collapse of Socialism at all. On the contrary, 
in each of the contending nations there has been an 
immense advance in the practical application of social- 
istic principles, — though, to be sure, in undemocratic 
fashion, under stress of necessity rather than from convic- 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 235 

tion of their ethical soundness. What broke down when 
this war began was the mythological metaphysic which 
many Socialists, especially those of the school of Marx, 
had fooKshly supposed to be an integral part of their 
system. For forty years they had been insisting, in the 
teeth of the facts, that there was no such thing as unity 
of interest between all the classes that compose a nation. 
They had declared that the working-man in Germany 
has more in common with the working-man in Russia 
or France than with the aristocracy or plutocracy of his 
own country. They had asserted that economic interest 
is the sole determinant of the human will, and conse- 
quently that solidarity must follow the pressure of this 
motive throughout the world, irrespective of physical 
and psychic frontiers. Accordingly, they had supposed 
that the outbreak of an international war would herald 
the combination of the workers of different countries in 
solid opposition to the schemes of the capitalistic groups 
by w^hom (as they maintained) the affairs of the nations 
are controlled. 

Now what happened when the war began was that 
these theorists experienced in themselves the irresistible 
working of the very forces of which they had denied the 
existence. They became aware for the first time that 
the German or French or English working-man actually 
has many more interests in common with all the classes 
of his own nation than with his own class in other nations. 
Gustave Herve was one of the first to volunteer in France, 
and the German Socialists have been among the bravest 
fighters in their country's cause. To those who had for 
years been preaching this truth, the instantaneous uni- 
fication of the nations in the face of the peril of in- 
vasion was neither shocking nor surprising. To those, 



236 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

on the other hand, who with short-sighted optimism had 
declared that it could not happen, it must needs have 
been a heart-breaking disappointment. 

Now there is no country in which the importance of a 
correct understanding of these great sociological forces 
is so vital and urgent as in America. We are here at- 
tempting, under wholly unprecedented conditions, to 
build up a unified nation out of the most diverse and 
heterogeneous elements. Unless we rightly understand 
the factors in our own nature which we must control to 
this end, the great experiment is foredoomed to failure. 
If it fails, then the hope of a peaceful and fraternal 
organization of mankind will perish with it, or at least 
will be deferred for an incalculable period. The Churches 
have here their greatest opportunity and their greatest 
responsibility. They must set themselves firmly against 
the spread-eagle jingoism which would make American 
patriotism identical with hatred of other nations, and 
also against the false theory of anti-patriotic cosmopol- 
itanism which has gained so much ground in recent years. 
It is the function of the Churches not only to be the 
standard-bearers of the ideal, but also to clarify the 
minds of men, in regard to the intellectual principles 
which should govern the formation and revision of ideals. 

The anti-patriotic theory of the class-war SociaKst 
needs no refutation. It Hes dead upon the battlefields 
of Europe. Every Marxian SociaHst in the contending 
armies is an irrefutable witness to the fact that Kfe is 
stronger than the single-track logic of the ''materiaHst 
conception of history." The actual spiritual unity of 
nations, which in economic and other minor interests may 
be divided against themselves, is demonstrated with 
tragic convincingness. The dream of a unification of 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 237 

mankind along class lines and in disregard of the spiritual 
frontiers of nations is dissipated. For good or for ill, we 
now know that that deep identity which is expressed in 
unity of language, and in the consciousness of a common 
past and a common lot, is greater and more radical than 
any difference of immediate poHtical policy or economic 
interest. No party will ever again seek to build upon the 
quicksands of the Marxian mythology. 

But this demonstration of the reality and the in- 
vincible strength of the psychic force of nationahsm must 
not lead us to abandon or to despair of what was sound 
in the cosmopolitan ideal. That ideal was not so much 
an illusion as a misstatement of a vitally important 
truth, which has too commonly been overlooked by the. 
advocates of nationalism. That we may see how im- 
portant this truth is, we have but to look at the horrible 
prospect held out by those who consciously reject it. 
General von Bernhardi is the man who has recently 
gained the widest hearing for the doctrine of exclusive 
nationalism. He maintains that it is of the nature of 
treason for any citizen ^ to entertain an ideal loyalty 
transcending that which he owes to his own country. 
Everybody has recoiled in horror from the brutal national 
egoism thus advocated. Yet here in America we have no 
less representative a citizen than Colonel Roosevelt 
proclaiming a doctrine which (whether he knows it or 
not) is in fact identical with that of Bernhardi. This is 
the doctrine of ''My country right or wrong" — a princi- 
ple which leads to a complete abdication of the moral 
judgment of citizens in regard to any act or policy of 
their country involving its relations to the rest of the 

^ At least of Germany : it is not clear that the doctrine applies to Amer- 
icans, especially those of German or Irish origin! 



238 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

world. Colonel Roosevelt and many others have 
snatched up this ill-considered and fatal catchword with a 
view to the unification of the American people. We are a 
medley of new-comers from all the lands of Europe, and 
the survival among us of extra-American loyalties in- 
volves the possibility of serious danger to the unity of 
our chosen country. Many of us are looking back to the 
civilization and the artistic tradition of Europe, instead of 
forward to that which is to be in America. Mr. Roose- 
velt is entirely right in saying that we should cease to ape 
Europe. He is no less completely wrong in maintaining 
that our American loyalty requires the abdication of our 
freedom of thought and of moral judgment in regard to 
America's foreign policy. 

It is curious that the most vociferous advocates of the 
doctrine of "My country right or wrong" are at the 
same moment loudest in voicing condemnations of Ger- 
many. How can they fail to detect the inconsistency of 
their attitude? If the doctrine which they proclaim is 
valid for America, it must be no less valid for any other 
nation. Yet the criticism most often passed upon Ger- 
many is that her people have slavishly acted upon this 
principle. They have acquiesced in every militaristic 
development demanded by their Government. They 
assented to the invasion of Belgium, precisely upon 
the ground that the acts of their Government are the 
acts of their country, and that they are bound to stand 
by their country in whatever course her rulers decide 
to take. Colonel Roosevelt's attitude in affirming this 
doctrine and simultaneously pouring out the vials of 
his wrath against Germany is a distressing evidence of 
his fundamental incapacity for clear ethical judgment. 
He is urging his compatriots to adopt an attitude which 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 239 

cannot fail to lead to the very results at which he is so 
horritied in the Old World. 

This narrow, chauvinistic and exclusive nationalism is 
as great a menace to the peace and progress of the world 
as the anti-nationalism of the cosmopohtan school. The 
only way to encounter both perils is to afhrm the true 
doctrine of nationalism. The starting-point in all plans 
for the peaceful federation of the world must be the 
principle laid down many years ago by Mazzini: 

Nations are the citizens of humanity, as individuals are the 
citizens of the nation. And as every individual lives a two- 
fold life, inward and of relation, so do the nations. As every 
individual should strive to promote the power and prosperity 
of his nation through the exercise of his special function, so 
should every nation, in performing its special mission, ac- 
cording to its special capacity, perform its part in the general 
work, and promote the progressive advance and prosperity 
of humanity. Nationality and humanity are therefore 
equally sacred. To forget humanity is to suppress the aim of 
our labours; to cancel the nation is to suppress the instrument 
by which to achieve the aim.^ 

The great Italian has here formulated the true prin- 
ciple of patriotism. He sees that there can be no such 
thing as a melting down of all mankind into one un- 
differentiated mass of humanity-in-general. He sees 
that the nation is a permanent and indispensable organ 
for the achievement of the ends of the race. He also sees 
that, because this is true, patriotism must be expressed 
in the form of a universal ethical principle. When this 
is done, we transcend the immoral and braggart doctrine 

^Mazzini, "The Holy Alliance of the Peoples" (1849), ^ Collected 
Works, vol. V, p. 274. 



240 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

of ''My country right or wrong," by defining the only 
conditions under which our country can be right, and 
consequently can demand from us a rational and un- 
divided allegiance. By the very law that binds me to my 
own country, I am equally bound to respect the devotion 
of all other men to theirs. Because I hold my own nation 
inviolable, I must equally protest against any policy 
which would lead to the violation of another nation. 

The principle here involved is the same as that to 
which we were led in our study of the idea of God. 
Spiritual perfection — of which for us the highest mani- 
festation is the perfection of humanity — is the inte- 
grated harmony of the minds and wills of all actual and 
possible rational agents. Into this conception there 
enter (as we said in Chapter III) ''both the completeness 
of the series and the uniqueness of each of its terms." 
The reasoning which justifies this conclusion applies to 
famines and nations as well as to the totality. The 
sacredness of every nation consists in the fact that it can 
contribute to the "general deed of man" some indis- 
pensable factor which no other nation can bring. Each 
has thus a unique mission; each is a chosen people. It is 
no sentimentality, but a literal truth of the highest 
moment, that "in the gain or loss of one race all the rest 
have equal claim." Such is the dynamism of our Hves 
that every act produces consequences far beyond the 
possibiHty of conscious following. Every act of a nation 
ramifies through space and reverberates through time, to 
the utmost verge of the world and to the remotest genera- 
tion of posterity. The Greeks at Marathon decided the 
fate of Europe for all time — Httle as they knew it. When 
Spain equipped the expedition of Columbus, she changed 
the whole future history of the world. 



RELIGIOxN AND NATIONALITY 241 

Love of country, then, and the duty of loyalty to one's 
fatherland or the land of one's choice, is a specific applica- 
tion of a principle which, being ethical, is necessarily 
universal. That principle demands a respect for the 
patriotism of other peoples as complete as the self- 
respect that goes with one's own patriotism. What is 
right for me is right for my neighbour. What it would be 
wrong for him to do towards me, it must be wrong for me 
to do towards him. The ethics of international policy 
consists in the appKcation to foreign affairs of the same 
moral principles that are recognized as binding within 
the limits of the nation. Until the whole world reaches a 
point where such an act as that of Germany towards 
Belgium would be impossible, it will not have attained 
even the beginnings of a truly ethical civilization. 
Mazzini's doctrine is the foundation-stone of the edifice 
of humanity. 

Implied in these contentions is the truth that the Moral 
Law is one and indivisible, and is paramount over all 
expediencies that conflict with it. Patriotism is the 
reverence that should be felt for one's nation as a special 
custodian of this law, and as an agent for the actualiza- 
tion of its requirements in face of a unique set of oppor- 
tunities and exigencies. The patriot is he whose ultimate 
loyalty is given unconditionally to this law, and only 
under it to his nation. The jingo doctrine is not pa- 
triotism, but a debased counterfeit which is really the 
opposite of what it simulates. 

This placing of the nation under humanity, and of 
both under a law that is objective, eternal and immutable 
in principle, clears up for us the confusion raised by the 
parrot-cry of ''My country right or wrong." It is your 
country's mission which gives her the right to your 



242 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

loyalty; and only in so far as she is seeking to fulfil it 
can she have a right to your approval and co-operation. 
In case she errs or sins, it is true patriotism to admonish 
her of the error or to convict her of the sin.^ But if you 
take the stand of the jingoes, you resign your pre- 
rogative as a moral agent. You give your conscience 
into the keeping of the Foreign Office, just as CathoKcs 
have sometimes given theirs into the keeping of the 
priest. Incidentally, too, you debar yourself from the 
right to blame any foreigner for the sins of his country; 
for if you blame him, he has but to retort that he acts 
by the same principle that you profess, and you are left 
without resource. In condemning the deeds of a foreign 
power, you appeal to a law superior to and binding upon 
all nations; and you tacitly pledge yourself to measure 
any future act of your own country by the standard that 
you invoke. 

These considerations belong to the alphabet of ethics. 
The fact that they are not self-evident and universally 
accepted is a terrible commentary upon the failure of the 
Churches to fulfil their trust. My plea is that they 
should now rise to the full requirements of this hitherto 
neglected duty, by teaching that patriotism is the highest 
application of the universal moral law, and is identical 
with religion. A nation's mission to humanity — its 
opportunity of rendering a unique but indispensable 
service to the race — constitutes the authentic revelation 
of God to its citizens. When they insist that its every 
policy and deed shall be directed towards the fulfilment 

^ "Patriotism is not the belief that your country is right: patriotism 
is the passion to keep your country in the right. A country *in the 
right ' is thinking and acting not more for its own good than for that of 
all humanity." — Booth Tarkington, article "The American View," in 
Metropolitan, July, 191 5. 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 243 

of this its ideal destiny, they are truly patriotic, how- 
ever violently the mob may accuse them of disloyalty 
or treason. 

The alarm aroused in the breasts of many Americans 
by the reaction of the European War upon our domestic 
problems serves to draw attention both to the special 
task which America has in her keeping and to her com- 
parative failure thus far to cope effectively with it. En- 
couraged by the heartfelt gratitude expressed by immi- 
grants of exceptional genius, we have come to look upon 
America as being in truth the promised land to the op- 
pressed of the whole earth. It is one of the superficial 
bad habits of all peoples to confound the ideals of their 
nation with its actual achievements. We mistake the 
so-called ''gHttering generalities" upon which the Re- 
public is founded for a statement of things already won, 
whereas they are in truth only the outlines of remote 
ideals. Because America aspires to be the promised 
land, we are apt to imagine that she already is it. 
Huxley once remarked that ''the slaying of a beauti- 
ful hypothesis by an ugly fact" is the daily tragedy of 
science. There are many ugly facts on every hand to 
slay the optimistic illusion of Americans as to what 
their country has accomplished towards actualizing the 
ideals which gave it birth. 

Among them is the truth which during the last two 
years has been reahzed more clearly than ever before, — 
that America has not so treated her immigrant population 
as to win to herself its complete and undivided loyalty. 
No doubt it is possible to exaggerate the extent of the 
evil of our disunion; but there is a very substantial re- 
siduum of truth, after every allowance has been made 
for exaggeration. It is not inconceivable that in the 



244 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

event of war between America and almost any nation..in 
Europe, the enemy power might have in this country a 
large population openly or secretly loyal to it and hostile 
to the Republic. Even in the case of those who have 
sincerely taken their pledge of allegiance to the United 
States, their loyalty is apt to be of the nature of an in- 
tellectual conviction, and, as such, inevitably weaker in 
its influence upon the will than the spontaneous and 
passionate sentiment of an inborn patriotism. 

Now, the first task for America (and it is indeed a 
gigantic one) is to deserve on her own behalf such an un- 
conditional and unquestioning allegiance as every other 
great nation is able to count upon from its citizens in 
any time of stress. This will necessitate, in the first 
place, the thinking out and the adoption of a poHcy in 
regard to immigration immeasurably more radical and 
far-reaching than any that has yet been contemplated. 
It may necessitate the practical closing of our doors to 
immigrants for at least a generation. I do not say that 
this will be necessary. My point is that if the competent 
study of the problem by disinterested experts should 
show it to be so, we must be prepared to act upon their 
finding. It certainly will be necessary to make far more 
rigid than hitherto the conditions of naturalization. We 
shall have to inaugurate a system of compulsory educa- 
tion for adult immigrants. The path in this direction is 
already being blazed in Chicago, where a body of un- 
official citizens have begun to organize in the public 
schools classes for the instruction of appHcants for 
citizenship. The effort is meeting with gratifying ac- 
ceptance, both by the educational authorities and by the 
immigrants, who in large numbers are availing them- 
selves of the privilege thus accorded. But it is merely a 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 245 

pioneer experiment, pointing in the direction of a far more 
thorough handhng of the problem on a national scale. 

The tragic irony of the situation, however, lies in the 
fact that the education we must give to the immigrant 
will consist in the inculcation of ideals of Americanism 
which at present are flagrantly belied by many experi- 
ences of his daily life. We must teach him, as we now 
teach his children and our own, that America stands for 
human equality; and on every hand he will see the grow- 
ing power of class distinctions, quite as abrupt as those 
of the European nations, and often more brutal. We 
shall teach him that America stands for equality of 
opportunity and for the granting of free scope to per- 
sonal merit. He will go from the school, and see all 
around him evidences of the power of an anonymous 
plutocracy, which, by a hundred devices, has gained the 
whip hand over State and municipal governments, and 
organized its commercial monopolies so effectively that 
no inventor of an improved process who might threaten 
them with competition can procure capital for the flota- 
tion of his enterprise.^ He knows by hard experience that 
in this country there is no less brutality in the treatment 
of labourers by their bosses and gangsters than in the 
Old World. He has encountered many new restrictions 
upon his liberty, such as he never met with in Europe. 
In the inhumanly sordid slums of our cities, he finds the 
^'pursuit of happiness" tenfold more a mockery and a 
wild-goose chase than he had ever dreamed it could be. 
These are some of the reasons why, instead of forgetting 

^ The reader will scarcely need to be reminded of the vivid picture of 
this state of things drawn by President Wilson in his book on The New 
Freedom. I would commend also the excellent treatise on Unpopular 
Government in the United States, by Prof. Albert M. Kales, of North- 
western University. (Chicago Univ. Press: 19 14.) 



246 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

his past, he frequently institutes unfavourable com- 
parisons between it and his present conditions. Until 
America actually redeems the tremendous promises made 
to its recruits from Europe, it will be vain to harangue 
them about the duty of according to their adopted coun- 
try a single and whole-souled allegiance. 

Nor must we refuse to open our eyes to the appalling 
anomaly still presented by the poHtical, economic and 
social status of the negro race among us. Europe is still 
smiling sardonically at the memory of that assemblage 
of freedom-loving slave-owners who drew up the dec- 
laration that all men are born equal and have an in- 
defeasible right to life and liberty. Since the days of 
the fathers, however, the RepubHc, at the cost of a con- 
vulsion which threatened its life, has succeeded in purg- 
ing itself of the cancer of chattel slavery. She did this 
very shortly after the backward and benighted despot- 
ism of Russia had abolished her immemorial system of 
serfdom. To-day the emancipated serfs of Russia are 
for the most part landowners, cultivating each his own 
little holding and living by its produce. America pledged 
her manumitted negroes the rights of free citizens, — a 
pledge which in the South has never been redeemed, and 
in the North has only been formally kept. Everybody 
knows by what evasions of the phghted faith of the Re- 
public the negroes have been defrauded of poKtical rights 
and denied equality of educational opportunity and of 
professional and economic status with their white fellow- 
citizens. The negro problem of to-day in this country, 
like the Jewish problem in Russia, is one that has been 
created by the nation's refusal to them of the rights of 
citizens and of the homage due to their moral dignity as 
human beings. The difference, however, between this 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 247 

country and Russia is that Russia's tyranny has been 
unblushing and unconcealed, whereas our own has been 
rendered more odious by the h}pocrisy of the Fifteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution, solemnly guaranteeing 
to the victims of past tyranny a benefit which in practice 
has been withheld from them. If the ideal unity which 
all American patriots desire is to be actualized, we must 
begin by purging our national system of these ugly and 
poisonous defects. 

It may be said that the problem is insoluble; that the 
negro is inferior, and so must be debarred from the free 
self-realization accorded to the white man. This is un- 
proved and unprovable; but my contention is that, if 
the white race of America really believes this, it ought 
frankly and honestly to act upon the belief. Let us add 
some footnotes to the Constitution. Let us rescind the 
Fifteenth Amendment and Section I of the Fourteenth. 
Let us, for heaven's sake, not perpetuate the falsehood 
that we are according to these people a freedom and 
equality which we have no intention of permitting them 
to enjoy. Let us not persist in first denying them educa- 
tional opportunity, and then pointing to their ignorance 
as a disqualification for the status of citizens. Let us not 
deliberately close the avenues of professional training 
and advancement to them, and then allege their economic 
backwardness as a proof of their inherent inferiority. 
Since we are in practice repudiating the ideals embodied 
in our organic laws, let us honestly say that we cannot 
live up to these ideals. Let us make clear what our 
real belief is: that all men are born equal, except those 
who are not; and that all have a right to the pursuit of 
happiness, so long as their pursuit of it does not cross 
the convenience of the dominant race or class. 



248 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

If it be asked what connection all this has with the 
problem of religion, I would reply, in the first place, that 
it was a system of law and custom, by which all the 
exigencies of social Hfe and class struggle were regulated, 
that constituted the substance of the religion of the Old 
Testament. Are the Constitutions of this nation and its 
States less sacred to us than the laws of Moses? Those 
laws emanated from the soul of the Jewish people, which 
they very appropriately called their God. The divinity 
of the system consisted in the fact that it embodied the 
highest ideals they were capable of conceiving. In this 
sense, and for these reasons, the legislation of the Old 
Testament really did constitute a divine revelation. 
We ought to regard our own organic laws as possessing 
for us the same kind of sanctity as the Mosaic legislation 
had for the Jews. They are our divine revelation. If 
they are defective, we have among us the reveahng 
God — the reason and conscience by which to amend 
them. If our practice falls below the level of their 
demands, we are to that extent apostate from the faith 
we have professed, and disloyal to the organizing genius 
of our nation, which is for us the incarnation of God. 

The Churches should systematically inculcate in the 
minds of the people this exalted and exalting view of the 
nation and its ideals. In our religion, American history 
should take a place equal to that which Jewish history 
held in the Hebrew religion, though without imitating 
the Jewish exclusiveness. In addition to the hymns 
of the ancient Jews, which confess their sins and cele- 
brate their deliverances, we should chant the psalms of 
our own poets and prophets, in confession of the sins of 
America, and in thanksgiving for her historic deliverances 
and development. We are rendered blind to the sig- 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 249 

nificance of our own position and problems, and to the 
dignity and responsibility of our own function as a 
contributor to the total achievement of humanity, by the 
fact that we are Hving on a borrowed religion, which 
consists mainly of expressions of another people's pa- 
triotism. What have our Churches to do with the vic- 
tories of the Jews over their neighbours, and with the 
exaltation of Jerusalem and its temple? Were not the 
American Revolution and the Civil War at least as 
important — to put it mildly — for us and for the human 
race at large, as the dehverance of the Jews from Egypt 
and from Babylon? Has there not been in our common 
Hfe as intimate an experience of the ultimate spiritual 
reality of the world as ever came to Isaiah, and have we 
not had poets and prophets equal in power of vision and 
speech to those of the old Hebrews? Why then should 
not the Churches give to American history, literature 
and poetry at least an equal place with that which they 
now suffer to be monopolized by those of the Jews? 

Never shall we see our own opportunities and respon- 
sibilities in the light of their true dignity until we act 
confidently upon the conviction that our experience of 
the divine is identical with that of the ancients. The 
secret of the strength of the Jewish rehgious system lay 
in the fact that its essential elements were unborrowed. 
This gave it such strength and vigour that the whole 
Western world has ever since been paralyzed by the 
thought that the Bible alone contained a divine revela- 
tion. We profess to have advanced in the direction of 
democratic and humanistic conceptions, but we are 
still afraid to give effect to our convictions. We dare 
not act upon the principle that Washington and Lincoln 
stand in exactly the same category as Moses and David. 



250 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

The result is that our own history and literature seem to 
us secular and commonplace as compared with those of 
this petty ancient people, — who, however, earned the 
right to their immortality by reason of their unwavering 
faith in their spiritual mission to mankind. Until we are 
wilHng to accord to our nation and its mission the same 
exalted position of identity with God and religion which 
the Jews gave to theirs, we cannot rise to the demands 
of our high calling, or achieve any fraction of the spiritual 
grandeur which is possible for us. 

The problem of America's national unification, and of 
the hindrances that delay it, is momentous not only for 
America but equally for the rest of the world. The 
special mission which constitutes what may well be 
called the divine task of this country is to supply, by the 
solution of its own problems, an example of the way in 
which the unification of the rest of the world may be 
effected. If we can demonstrate that all the races of the 
earth can dwell together as one people, in perfect amity 
and freedom and in a unity of civilization enriched by 
the contribution of each constituent element, we shall 
have shown how the feuds and the estranging hatreds of 
the European peoples can be purged away. Our national 
ideals are sound and right; it is our practical violation of 
them that is wrong. The only ultimate basis for the 
peaceful federation of the world is that of republican 
equality. Democracy is the only extant form of govern- 
ment which can give scope to the finest spiritual possi- 
bilities of every human being. If, on this Continent, 
we can have forty-eight States in one nation, each pre- 
serving its internal autonomy, but without so much as 
the possibility of war, why should not the same state of 
things be duplicated in Europe? They talk there of 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 251 

"insoluble problems," of clashes of racial and economic 
interest that can only be settled through bloodshed. The 
answer is that we, with huge numbers of all the European 
races in our population, have created a machinery by 
which every possible conflict of aspiration and interest 
can be harmonized, and by which the disastrous possibil- 
ity of war is eliminated. There is in the nature of things 
no more reason for war between France and Germany 
than for war between Ohio and Indiana. The same 
federal principle which has made war impossible as 
between Ohio and Indiana, while securing to them all and 
more than all the liberty enjoyed by France and Ger- 
many, might bring about permanent and indestructible 
peace in Europe. It is, indeed, the principle upon which 
Europe will ultimately be driven to organize its Hfe. 
This, then, is the high mission of the American Com- 
monwealth, — to demonstrate that what Europeans think 
impossible can be done, and thereby to "give light to 
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, 
and to guide their feet into the way of peace." 

There are two views held by thinkers as to the develop- 
ment of American civilization, which are mutually ex- 
clusive, and both of which seem to me false. One is the 
theory summed up in Mr. Zangwill's happy phrase, 
"the melting-pot." The other is the doctrine that each 
national group represented in the population of the 
United States should be culturally segregated, in order 
that it may preserve the standards and traditions of the 
civilization in which it originated. These two views are 
derived, the one from the theory of cosmopolitanism, the 
other from the doctrine of exclusive nationahsm; both of 
which, as I have sought to show, are morally and prac- 



252 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

tically impossible. The rejection of these two views 
will lead us to a third, which I shall suggest is true and 
sound. 

(i) The notion of the "melting-pot" impKes that it is 
possible to cut off our immigrants from their past, and 
to reduce them to a homogeneous and undifferentiated 
mass of humanity-in-general, from which they may 
afterwards be worked up into conformity v/ith a fixed 
American type. It is as impossible, however, to do this 
with the souls of men as with their bodies. Humanity- 
in-general is simply an abstraction. There are no "hu- 
man beings" in this sense. As was said at the beginning 
of this chapter, every man and woman is a synthesis of 
the common elements of humanity, which has been 
qualified and characterized by the manifold influences of 
a special psychological atmosphere. We never meet a 
man or woman who is merely a man or woman. We 
meet only Chinamen, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, 
Germans. On the other hand, that American type, into 
the likeness of which this theory requires us to transfigure 
our immigrants, is only in the making; it is not yet com- 
pletely made. Its development, moreover, is by way of a 
series of modifications, due in large part to its contact 
with the already highly differentiated new-comers from 
the Old World. It is a violation of all that we understand 
by evolution to suppose that this unfinished American 
can assimilate into his own likeness all who come to our 
shores, without being himself modified in the process. 
Neither the New England Puritan, nor the Southern 
Cavalier, nor yet the hardy pioneer of the West (to 
specify three of the class-types which we associate with 
the idea of the American) is a fixed and final product, 
constituting a matrix upon which new arrivals can be 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 253 

moulded without its being itself affected. The American 
type, in so far as it is developed, represents the effects of 
adjustment to an environment (physical and psychical) 
which is itself changed to some extent by every immigrant 
who enters it. We must face the fact that this American 
type will undergo further modification, if immigration is 
suffered to continue. No doubt the immigrant will be 
markedly changed: but the absorbing complex will be 
altered by him, as well as he by it. 

(2) The melting-pot ideal is thus impracticable. It is, 
indeed, nothing but a hasty catchword, snatched up to 
save the labour of serious thinking. We turn, therefore, 
to the alternative embraced by those who favour the 
perpetuation of foreign groups as such, each with a 
set of ideals, traditions, and social and cultural aspi- 
rations, differing from those of every other group, and 
also from those which have determined the historic 
development of America. According to this view, the 
Republic can never become a true inward and spiritual 
unity. It must remain a bundle of inwardly united but 
mutually repellent groups, loosely bound together by a 
tie of common interest totally inferior in strength and 
quality to the ideal loyalty which fuses each constituent 
to its past. 

Setting aside the question whether this is permanently 
possible, it cannot be denied that from the national 
point of view it would be intolerable. No commonwealth 
can endure the thought of any group of its citizens 
cherishing another national loyalty, which rivals or 
transcends that which they accord to the country and 
the Government with which they have cast in their lot. 
No other nation would dream of tolerating such a state 
of things. The very idea of England or Germany suffer- 



254 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

ing a large mass of its citizens to call themselves Franco- 
Germans or Russo-English is inconceivable; and we can 
all readily see why. The reason is sociologically identical 
with that which led the Jewish lawgivers to deify the soul 
of their nation, and to represent it as saying, ''Thou shalt 
have none other gods before me." By the accidents of 
our historic and geographical situation, the indispensable 
necessity of this inward unity of ideal has hitherto been 
obscured to us. But the hour is coming, and now is, 
when we can no longer hide it from ourselves save at 
our peril. Whatever secondary loyalties and subsidiary 
patriotisms may for another generation or two survive 
among us, we have now reached the time when the "gold 
and purple" of every American's heart must be given 
unequivocally and unconditionally to this RepubHc. 
Our recent exigencies have brought us abruptly to the 
stark Entweder-oder which is rightly insisted upon in every 
nation except our own. The very life of the Republic 
depends upon each citizen's deciding whether he is an 
American or something else. If it be said that the choice 
is a hard one, the answer is that it has been voluntarily 
embraced by those who now resent having it forced upon 
them. The choice of nationality is one of the includible 
finalities of life. The man who hesitates to declare him- 
self betrays the fact that he has in truth already de- 
cided, — and decided against America. 

He who rejects both the alternative theories sketched 
in the last few pages, may reasonably be asked to out- 
line his own solution of the problem; and this I shall now 
very briefly attempt to do. 

(3) The advance of civilization takes place by way of 
contact and cross-fertilization. Isolation is as bad for a 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 255 

people as for an individual. The self-made nation, like 
the self-made man, may adore its creator, but humanity 
at large seldom has reason to approve that creator's 
wisdom or taste. On the other hand, there have been 
many instances of advance per saltiim when two partially 
developed t>'pes of civilization have been brought into 
relations of contact and interaction. When this happens, 
it is precisely the points of difference between the two 
types of culture which produce the reciprocal enrichment. 
That w^hich is already common to both may blend, but 
it does not propagate. 

The high promise of American life consists in the fact 
that it has within its control the possibiHty of a fructify- 
ing contact between an unprecedentedly large number of 
t3rpes of civilization, juxtaposed in a close and permanent 
intimacy such as never has been seen elsewhere. What 
may be the final result of this unexampled opportunity 
is unpredictable, because it is contingent upon the opera- 
tion of factors incalculable in number and complexity. 
We know beforehand, however, that the efflorescence 
must needs be of the highest aesthetic and spiritual ex- 
cellence, if only the situation which constitutes its po- 
tentiality be wisely handled. We must arrange that the 
process of contact between the different types of civiliza- 
tion shall be deliberately controlled and guided. It must 
not be fortuitous, as in the past. It must be an affair, 
so to speak, of spiritual eugenics, in which, although the 
outcome is incapable of exact quantitative prediction, we 
shall have beforehand an assurance that it will be quali- 
tatively desirable. 

Such an ideal demands not the segregation of every 
type of civilization which is imported, but the careful 
study of the elements of all of them, as possible con- 



256 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

tributions to that new and richer type of civilization 
which is to be evolved in America. The legitimate work 
of our many nationalistic societies is simply this forward- 
looking elaboration of their inheritance. These societies 
have no business to think of themselves as agencies for 
preserving the cultural achievements of the lands from 
which their members came, and the loyalty to those lands 
which such achievements inspire. Their business is to dis- 
cover the elements of their racial inheritance which, if 
transplanted into American soil, would be genuine con- 
tributions to American civilization, compatible with 
America's history and ideals, and valuable for their 
future development. If, for example, there is in any 
American city a Swedish or British society composed of 
American citizens, that society must not exist and work 
for the sake of Sweden or Britain. It would be treason 
to the Republic for it to do so. It has, however, a per- 
fectly legitimate place and function if it exists and works 
for the sake of the United States. Let it by all means 
keep alive what is good in its inheritance; but let it re- 
member always that the things so preserved are offer- 
ings on the altar of the God of America. 

The national application of this principle would mean, 
in the first place, that we must cease to subject our im- 
migrants to conditions of urban life which make it im- 
possible for them to preserve the traditions and the arts 
which they bring with them. In the second place, it will 
necessitate a new course of study, by which all Americans 
shall come to know, with some degree of intimacy, the 
history, traditions and culture of all the groups which are 
being incorporated into the body politic. This study 
should not be antiquarian and retrospective; it should be 
utilitarian and prospective. It demands on all sides an 



RELIGION AND NATION/VLITY 257 

attitude of modesty, a spirit of receptiveness, and a 
whole-souled devotion to the common good of the nation 
which is here being created. 

When we go to Europe, we feel the power and the lure 
of the past. It is our habit to express a certain good- 
humoured scorn for the European, on account of his 
submissiveness to history and precedent. We need, 
however, so to train our imagination that we shall come 
to feel in this country the claim of the future, as po- 
tently as the urge of the past is felt elsewhere. We have 
the possibility of a civilization which shall be to that 
of Greece and the Italian Republics what the scientific 
power of the modern world is to that of antiquity. But 
whether this possibility shall be realized or not is con- 
tingent upon our intelligent handling of our opportu- 
nities. There is no inevitability about it. There is no 
fate, no self-executing law of evolution, which will bring 
it about independently of our conscious will. If we 
are capable of taking the long view and co-ordinating the 
activities of our life to the glorious but far-distant goal, 
it will be attained. If we are not, the opportunity which 
now is ours will be dissipated. We shall sink into a 
slavery to our machinery yet worse than that which we 
endure to-day, and America will become the most sordid 
and provincial of all the nations of the earth. 

The spiritual leadership necessary for such an enter- 
prise constitutes the opportunity of the schools, the uni- 
versities and the Churches. In every community there 
should be international groups, bound by a conscious 
sense and an explicit declaration of loyalty to America, 
and bringing together, for the sake of America, the 
riches of their national patrimonies. The questions for 
each constituent of such groups are these: What is there 



258 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

in the culture I have inherited which could with advan- 
tage to America be transplanted here? What of my best 
can I ojEfer to the growing civilization of the land to which 
I have sworn allegiance? What unique thing has my old 
country produced which will serve for the enrichment 
of mankind in general, and specifically of my new coun- 
try? 

It is easy to see how vast a programme of profitable 
work is thus laid open to the national and international 
groups that already exist in this country, and to other3 
which could be founded to carry it out. In its developed 
form, the plan would entail courses of lectures and the 
preparation of text-books for use in schools and colleges. 
The study of the subject in our educational institutions 
might be undertaken either as a new item in the curri- 
culum, or by a remodelling of the courses in history and 
literature. Every preacher could find in it inexhaustible 
material for his sermons. It would provide a legitimate 
channel for those secondary loyalties and subsidiary 
patriotisms of which I have spoken. It would change 
these from being, what they too often are to-day, a 
menace to the unity and progress of America, into 
the most potent means for the attainment of these 
ends. 

No less a motive, however, than the religious concep- 
tion of our nation's destiny can be adequate to the 
fulfilment of its spiritual promise. The names of Athens 
, and Jerusalem are, in Emerson's phrase, "ploughed into 
' the history of the world," because their citizens conse- 
crated themselves to Athens and Jerusalem as to their 
gods. Sir John Seeley has well remarked that it would 
sound incongruous for us to give in our public worship 
the same place to our own nations and cities as the Jews 



RELIGION AND NATIONALITY 259 

gave to theirs.^ It would indeed seem like a bad joke 
for me to suggest to my own fellow-citizens that in their 
churches they should sing, ''Oh, pray for the peace of 
Chicago. They shall prosper that love thee . . . God 
is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved." Yet 
until its citizens do thus think and feel towards Chicago, 
Chicago cannot begin to be worthy of such veneration. 
Until America and her destiny mean to us what the 
laws of Athens meant to Socrates, and what the mission 
of Israel meant to the Hebrew prophets, we cannot hope 
either for a truly exalted patriotism or for a great out- 
burst of national genius in art; since only this idealizing 
enthusiasm can possibly quicken such an outburst. 

Genius fructifies only in the directions in which the 
national attention is canalized. That is why we are 
to-day building magnificent railway-stations, but no 
cathedrals, except imitations of European models; lux- 
urious private dwellings (which latterly have manifested 
an immense improvement in taste), but no national 
theatres. That is why our creative energy, which ought 
to be producing literature and philosophy of more than 
Elizabethan splendour and more than Athenian pro- 
fundity, is being drawn off into commercial enterprise. 
We are giving our life to acquiring the means of purchas- 
ing from Europe artistic satisfactions which are not 
congruous with the special inspirations of our own na- 
tional genius. 

This phase, of course, is transitional, and the situation 
is not desperate. We have our own great prophets and 
poets. We are even beginning to discover them. Nor 
do I wish in the least to disparage the spirit which has 
created the Panama Canal, and which expresses itself 
^ Natural Religion, Pt. ii, chap, iv ("Natural Religion and the State.") 



26o THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

in such novel combinations of utility and magnificence 
as the two great railway terminals of New York City, 
the Union Station at Washington, and the Woolworth 
Building, — one of the wonders of the world in its beauty, 
as well as in the engineering science it expresses. But 
we must also yoke this mighty energy and inventiveness 
to the work of consciously upbuilding our civilization on 
its aesthetic, Hterary, political and religious sides. 



CONCLUSION 

THE HOPE OF SPIRITUAL UNIFICATION 

My purpose throughout this book has been to draw 
attention to elements of reHgion which are verifiable 
by experience, and to indicate the enormous task, and 
the consequent golden opportunity, which lie before 
the Churches. In conclusion, I would urge that if the 
Churches should concentrate their attention upon these 
verifiable elements, they would not only render a service 
of unprecedented usefulness to mankind, but they would 
also, without external coercion and without surrendering 
any vital principle, be insensibly led on to a unity of 
purpose and conviction in the Hght of which their sec- 
tarian differences would sink into utter insignificance. 
The mediaeval Church was right in the high valuation 
it placed upon unanimity of spiritual conviction. It 
was wrong in thinking that such unity could be brought 
about by coercion and by the suppression of liberty of 
thought and discussion. Such a course can produce 
only a maimed intelligence or a hypocritical conformity. 
Out of the struggle between the authoritarian principle 
and the demand for freedom has sprung the compromise 
called toleration. We now have a world which is riven 
to shards on the spiritual side, and has almost ceased to 
regard unity of inward conviction and inspiration as 
possible, or even as desirable. 

The ultimate reason for this state of things is that in 

the life of to-day there is no general sense of sovereign 

261 



262 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

and unconditional imperatives, to which all personal 
and class interests ought to be subordinated. Chris- 
tianity, indeed, embodies such an imperative; but the 
Churches have lost their power to teach it. Their own 
apostasy — their own repeated sacrifices of principle to in- 
terest — have enervated them. When they do proclaim 
the doctrine that the gaining of the whole world ought to 
be counted as nothing in comparison with the interests of 
the soul, their message falls upon ears rendered scornful 
and incredulous by the memory of the way in which the 
Church has repeatedly denied in practice the doctrine 
which its lips afhrm. Slowly the reduction and the 
denudation of the claim of duty upon men has gone on, 
until for most to-day the very word means no more 
than self-interest. In every department of life we see 
what Newman called ^'the wild living intellect of man," 
yoked to the steeds of passion and self-interest instead 
of to high self -obliterating loyalties, and heading for 
the abyss of animalism and sensuality. To-day no law 
is obeyed except for gain. Money and power are desired 
not as means of larger service and usefulness, but for 
the sake of ''the dark idolatry of self." Marriage is 
reduced to a mere convenience, to be tolerated or aban- 
doned at whim. Even such self-restraint as is practised, 
is endured only for the sake of the future capacity for 
enjoyment which it promises to secure. Self-advertise- 
ment, self-worship, self-enrichment — these three alone 
animate the conduct of multitudes. 

No nation can be great, no nation can endure, whose 
people run after the false gods of self and class. We must 
regain for America the high olden loyalty of her children, 
else her glorious story will be ''gathered like a scroll 
within the tomb." Our noble and puissant nation must 



CONCLUSION 263 

be released from the Comus-spell that has bemused her, 
and freed from her idolatry of pelf and luxury. She must 
become aware of herself as entrusted with a divine mis- 
sion to all humanity, and all her children must learn to 
care far less for personal gain, or even for the immediate 
advantage of their class, than for the abiding welfare of 
the nation, whose glory is her power of universal service. 

Now, it is obvious that such a loyalty as is needed 
can be nothing less than a religion. It may not bear 
the Christian name; it cannot be expressed solely in 
Christian phraseology. But it must be such a de- 
votion as men have never rendered save to their gods, 
and such as cannot be inspired by any motive short of 
what is counted ultimately sacred and inviolable. This 
can only be engendered by blending the ideal inspira- 
tions of all religious bodies, and by a re-interpretation of 
religion in such language as shall show its identity with 
the highest patriotism and its vital relation to the en- 
during good of men and nations in the Hfe that now is. 
Every Christian Church, if it be wise, can express its 
message in such terms. If it cannot, then it is in so far 
not truly Christian; and its inabiHty to do so will involve 
and justify its own speedy supersession. 

But what I am contending for is an interest more 
supreme and transcendent than the maintenance of 
Christianity in its outward form. No true inheritor 
of the spirit of Christ would hesitate for a moment to 
say: Let the name of Christ perish from the memory 
of men, if only so is it possible for his spirit to be lifted 
into sovereignty over their hearts and wills. It some- 
times happens in the spiritual life, though not in out- 
ward nature, that that which is sown cannot be quick- 
ened except it die; and it may be that the only condition 



264 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

upon which the spirit of Jesus can rise into newness of 
life as an impelling force in future civilization, is that 
outward homage to him shall disappear. I do not sug- 
gest that this is certain or even Kkely to happen; my 
point is that it were better so than that his name should 
continue to be outwardly reverenced, while that for 
which he lived and died is in practice trodden under foot. 
Short, however, of such a complete disappearance of 
the outward form of historic Christianity, it is certain 
that the existing Churches must make radical changes 
of policy and doctrine if they are to survive. The cur- 
rent apologetic of orthodoxy is worse than futile as 
addressed to a generation trained in critical philosophy 
and in the methods and the rigorous standards of ex- 
actitude characteristic of modern science. The Church 
to-day stands face to face with the choice between its 
letter and its life. It can preserve the outward forms 
of traditional orthodoxy only at the cost of the stifling 
of that spirit by which, and for the sake of which, they 
were originally created. Christianity now stands where 
Judaism stood at the beginning of the Christian era. 
It must either receive and blend with its historic ele- 
ments the new spiritual life that is surging through the 
world, or it must suffer a tragic but not unmerited super- 
session. More than half of America is to-day without a 
religion. Without a rehgion it cannot Kve, nor can it 
live with the rehgion of the past. The experience of ages 
justifies the conviction that the old faith cannot again 
prevail, except by an adaptation more radical and far- 
reaching than any it has hitherto undergone. The ques- 
tion, then, for the Churches is whether they value the let- 
ter more than the spirit, and the past more than that fu- 
ture, the creation of which is entrusted to men now living. 



CONCLUSION 265 

Mere toleration of diflferences in religion is as beggarly 
and unsatisfactory a compromise as it would be in our 
knowledge of the external world. Our feeling in regard 
to science is that universal and objective truth is to be 
found; and so long as there is difference of belief we are 
unsatisfied. Now, no man who is convinced of the uni- 
versal validity of the principles of reason can doubt that 
incontrovertible truth in the sphere of religion, whatever 
it may prove to be, is at least attainable. If we have not 
reached it, this is because our methods of inquiry have 
not been right, or have not been adequately developed. 
We have adhered to the pre-scientific methods of anti- 
quity in the search for ultimate religious truth, and the 
results have inevitably proved discouraging; so much so 
that we have even surrendered the ideal. We have grown 
so accustomed to mere individuahstic toleration of differ- 
ences of view with regard to God and fate that we have 
come not merely to acquiesce in perpetual diversity of 
conviction as unavoidable, but almost to count it good. 
The proposer, therefore, of a plan which aims, among 
other things, at ending it, must say at least a word in 
explanation of his desire to do so. 

I would accordingly remind the reader that it is not 
long since men were at sixes and sevens over many of the 
questions of physical science. Not only did unity of 
behef in these matters appear impossible, but it was not 
even felt to be necessary. To-day, however, we can see 
that the immense enterprises — ^in engineering, in mining, 
in the building up of systems for the transportation of 
men and commodities, in medicine and surgery, in the 
improvement and safeguarding of the pubhc health, and 
in a thousand other matters of vital importance — which 
have transformed the world within the memory of men 



266 THE RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE 

still living, could never have even begun to be possible 
had not the old diversity of belief in regard to the make 
of the physical world been driven out and replaced by 
approximate unity. The world to-day is suffering spirit- 
ually by reason of the diversity of religious beliefs even 
more than it formerly suffered materially through the 
lack of unanimity in the understanding of physical facts. 

It is, moreover, impossible for thoughtful men to rest 
satisfied with a state of affairs which inevitably leaves 
men's moral and spiritual convictions at the stage of 
mere beliefs. Religion will not rise to its full power until 
experience has given place to experiment, and until, 
wherever possible, conscientious convictions are trans- 
formed into demonstrated truths. 

It is not possible at present to forecast the immense 
achievements in the regeneration of human nature, in 
the wedding of mighty genius to forms of unpredictable 
efficiency and beauty, which will ensue when our com- 
mand over the forces that generate character is as com- 
plete as our present control over the resources of the ex- 
ternal world. The anticipation, however, of such an era 
of man's godlike self-fulfilment, is justified by every ana- 
logy of experience. No man in Francis Bacon's day could 
have foreseen the effect of his proposals to cultivate nat- 
ural knowledge as a means for the relief of man's estate; 
and, to many, his visions of the triumphs to be won by 
his method doubtless seemed baseless and fantastic. The 
hope of the world in rehgion must also remain vague. It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be. But it is as rational 
to anticipate a surpassing glory to result from spiritual 
unification as it would be fooHsh to attempt to delineate 
that glory in detail before the hour of its manifestation 
shall arrive. 



INDEX 



B 



Addison, 159, 161 

/Esop's fables compared with 
Christ's parables, 102 

Agnosticism, scientific and eth- 
ical, X 

Alcibiades, 128 notes, 158 

America, national task of, 236; 
ideals and achievements of, 
243 ff.; problem of immigration 
in, 244, 251-5; negro problem 
of, 246-7; unification of, 250; 
evolution of civilization in, 

255 ff. 
Apology, Plato's, 127, 128; cited, 

129 note; 131, 188, 215 
Areopagitica, Milton's, 171 
ahistophanes, 131, 134, 158 
Aristotle, 113, 122, 180, 205, 

209, 216 
Arnold, Matthew, 68, 75, 77 f., 

109, 137, 164, 175, 187, 192, 202 
Asceticism, 207 ff. 
Athanasian Creed, and PersonaUty 

of God, 25 f. 
"Atheism": of Socrates, 132; vul- 
gar conception of, 133 
Athens, rehgion and law in, 227 
Augustine, St., his City of God, 5, 

21-2, 94, 117, 214 
Authority, perverter of moral 

judgment, 134 f. 



Bacon: his "idols," 144, 161, 266 
Baconian method, 176 
Banquet, parable of, 94 
Banquet, Xenophon's, 128 note 2 
Baptism, social meaning of, 24, 221 

of Jesus, four differing 

accounts of, 89 
Barclay, Robert, 183 
Baxter, Richard, iidnote 
Beatific Vision, 209 
Behaviour, three types of, 69 f. 
BeHefs not tolerated by modern 

nations, 224 f. 
"Benefit of clergy," 223 
Bennett, Arnold, cited, 27 
Bergson, 26; his elan vital, 52; 
criticism of, 53, 169; on extra- 
logical mentality, 170, 183-4; 
on duration, 198 f. 
Bernhardt, 237 

Bible, Protestant theory oi, 44-5; 
current attitude towards, 75; 
revelation in, 155; inspiration 
of, 161 ff.; Western world and 
the, 248-9 
Birth of Jesus, legends of, 88 
Blasphemy, Socrates charged with, 

133 
Book of Mormon, 182 
Browne, Slr Thomas, 193; cited, 

196-7 



267 



268 



INDEX 



Buddhism, 113 
BUNYAN, 162 

Butler, Samuel, on natural 
selection, 51-2 



Catholicism and nationality, 229 

Causes and conditions, confusion 
of, 195 and note 

Cave men, Plato's allegory of, 
168 f. 

Cebes, 203, 209 f. 

"Choir Invisible," George Eliot's, 
191 

Christianity, original elements of, 
5; social message of, 14; future 
of, 120 f.; not merely hedonistic, 
125; outlook for, 263-4 

"Christian Science," 182 

Church and State, 218 ff.; in Eng- 
land, 221 ff.; why modern States 
are Churches, 223 ff. 

Churches, dissensions of, x, xi; 
Position and Outlook of, chap, 
i; Causes of Comparative Fail- 
ure of, chap, ii; erroneous in- 
dictment of, 2 ff.; corruption of, 
4; standard for judging, iUd.; 
preserved the fragments of 
Graeco-Roman civilization, 5 ff.; 
mediators of innovating ideas, 
8; membership of, in U. S., 10 ff.; 
mistakes of, 18 ff.; distinctive 
functions of, 28 ff.; "institu- 
tional" work of, criticized, ihid.; 
and schools, 32 f.; sum- 
mary of reforms needed in, 41-2; 
relation of, to nationality and 



the State, 217 ff.; task of Amer- 
ican, 236, 242, 257, 261 ff. 
Churchill, Winston, 39 
Civilization, evolution of, 251, 

254 f. 
Clergy, demands made upon, 27 f., 
31; causes of decline of calibre 
of, 38 ff. 
Clifford, W. K., cited, 20 
Commandment, the first, 227 note 
Communistic practice coinciding 
with individualistic theory, 219 
Compromise, Morley's, cited, 50 
Comte's rejection of metaphysics, 

ix 
Consciousness-in-general, 64 
Conybeare, F. C, 85 note 
Cosmopohtanism, fallacy of, 234; 

sound ideal of, 237, 239 ff. 
Creeds, misuse of, 24; inadequacy 
of, 25; value of, 26; need for re- 
interpretation of, 40; uniform- 
ity of creed, why anciently in- 
sisted on, 224 f. 
Crito, Plato's, 129, 188 
Cromwell's Ironsides, 162 
Cubists, 169 



"Daimon" of Socrates, the, 128-9 

and 7iote 
Defence of Socrates, Xenophon's, 

cited, 129 
Democracy, present crudity of, 

156; value of, 250 
Dialogue, the Platonic, as literary 

vehicle, 157 
DiOTiMA, 167 
Docetic heresy, 91 



INDEX 



269 



Ecce Homo, Seeley's, 78 

Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker's, 45; 
cited, 139 note, 140 

Education, Socratic theory of, 143, 
151; monopoly of, by the me- 
diaeval Church, 222; compulsory, 
by modem States, ibid. 

Ego, relation of, to time, 199 

Eliot, George, 69, 191 

Emerson, 95; on Jesus, 113; on 
Plato, 156 note; on inspiration, 
174 f-; 178-9, 207, 258 

Empedocles on Etna, Arnold's, 
quoted, 109-10 

Erasmus, 44 

Eschatology, 98 note 

Established Church, the English, 
221 ff. 

Eternal punishment, Plato's myths 
of, 153; Platonic, Christian, and 
Augustinian doctrines of, 214 

Eternity and time, 198, 202 

Ethical Movement, the, 12, 15 ff. 

Ethical teaching of Socrates, 139 ff. 

Ethics, Aristotle's, cited, 205 

Eucharist, 23; social function of, 
ibid.; as a pohtical test, 225 

Eugenics, Plato's theory of, 151 

Euthydemus, Plato's, 146 

EUTHYDEMUS, I46-9 

Evangelists, their dependence on 
Jesus, 84-s 

Evolution, misunderstandings of, 
49 ff.; John Morley on, 50; Berg- 
son on, 52-3; propounders of not 
materialists, 54, 194 

.Existence and Reality, 55 f., 200 



Fathers, Greek and Latin, con- 
trasted, 7 

Federal principle, value of the, 251 

Fire-bringcr, Moody's, quoted, 154 

"Form," 176 

Fox, George, 183 

Freedom of religious belief, why 
tolerated, 224 

Futurists, 169 



Genealogies of Jesus through 
Joseph, 88 

General Will, the, 74, 178 

Genius, dynamics of, 259 

Germany, unification of, 221; Mr. 
Roosevelt's criticism of, 238 

God and the Bible, Arnold's, 77 

God, Athanasian Creed on, 25 f.; 
Re-interpretation of, chap, iii; 
experiential basis for belief in, 
43; existence of, 55; theoretical 
and practical view of, 57; def- 
inition of in XXXIX Articles, 
58; need of, analyzed, 62; per- 
sonaHty of, 64 f.; elements of 
perfection of, 67; psychological 
account of, 68-9; reality of, 
70 ff.; symbols of, 72 ff.; "God 
behind the gods," 73; dem- 
ocratic conception of, 124; 
Socratic conception of, 133 and 
note; the Jewish, 248 

Gods, common function of, 69; 
nature of tribal, 226 

Good, nature of the, 139 ff. 



270 



INDEX 



Goodness and efficiency, 106 ff. 

the divine, Socrates on 

133; Mansel and Mill on, 134 ff. 

Gorgias, Plato's, 142, 153 and note 

Gospels, conditions for studying, 
76 ff.; effects of higher criticism 
on, ibid.; works recommended 
for elucidating, 77-9; Schmiedel 
on, 79; "harmonies" of, 81; prin- 
ciple for criticizing, 114; see also 
titles 

Greece, modern, 231 



personal, 190; distinguished from 
eternity, 197 ff.; root of the 
desire for, 212 

Individual, sacredness of the, 66-7 

Inner Light, 170, 183 

Inspiration, chap, vi; BibHcal, 
161 ff.; Platonic theory of, 
166 ff.; conditions of experienc- 
ing, 167; definition of, 185 

Isaiah, 185, 249 

Italy, unification of, 220 f. 



Heminge and Condell, 85 

Herve, Gustave, 224, 23s 

Higher criticism, 77, 80 

Holy Alliance of the Peoples, 
Mazzini's, cited, 239 

Holy Ghost, the, 179 

Homer, 161 

Hooker, 45; his Ecclesiastical 
Polity cited, 139 note, 140 

Humanity (the Positivist abstrac- 
tion), 190 

Humanity and nationality, 228-9 

Huxley, on the Resurrection, 91, 
243 



Ideals, reahty of, 68 

"Idols," the Baconian, 144 

Imitation of Christ, 121 

Immigrant population of America, 
243 ; its relation to the Repubhc, 
244, 250; problem of assim- 
ilating, 251-5 

Immortality, chap, vii; must be 



James, William, 199 

Jesus, leadership of, 20 f.; "Re- 
discovery" of, chap, iv; few 
facts known concerning, 81; his- 
toricity of, 82, 92; no contem- 
porary written accounts of, 82; 
genealogies of, through Joseph 
as his father, 88; resurrection- 
stories of, 89 ff . ; sayings of, 90, 
92, loi, 115; idolatrous attitude 
towards, 92; Parables of, 93 ff., 
105; his "secret" teaching, 
95 ff.; revolution threatened by, 
97; his answers to trick ques- 
tions, 98-9 and notes; his teach- 
ing of non-resistance, 100 f.; his 
reaUsm, 103; his religious in- 
tuition, 104; secret of his dem- 
ocratic faith, 112; moral origin- 
ahty of, 114; repudiation of 
title "Good Master" by, 115 f.; 
original tradition of, 117 f.; has 
he "had his day"? 118 f., 263-4; 
real resurrection of, 122; his 
teaching on salvation, 213 



INDEX 



271 



Jewish nation, struggle for exist 
ence of, 231; religious patriot- 
ism of, 332, 248-9 

Jews, connection of politics and 
religion among the, 179, 221, 
226; of varying nations, dif- 
ferences among, 229 f. 

Jingoism, 236, 242 

Job, 74 

John (Gospel), 87 £f. 

Joseph, genealogies of, 88 

JowETT, Benjamin, cited, 167, 
202, 216 

Judaism, liberal, leaders of, 12 

JuLiCHER, on the Parables, 94, 99 

K 

Kaiser, the, 221 

Kales, A. M., 245 note 

Kant, 47, 121, 198 

Knowledge: and virtue, 143; ob- 
stacles to, 144, 150; origin of, 
203 

L 

Lazarus, Parable of, in 

Leuba, J. H., on function of reli- 
gion, 70 and note 

Lewis, Rev. Elvet, 2 

Liberalism, British, 219 

Life, problem of worth of, 154 

LiGUORi, S. Alfonso di, 73 

LippMANN, W., ix 

Literature and Dogma, Arnold's, 
77 f.; cited, 137 note; 175, 192 

Logos, 48 

Luke (Gospel), 85 ff.; dependence 
on Mark, 85; contrast with 



Matt., 86-7; problem of Sermon 
on Mount in, 99 

M 

Mac AULA Y, 162; on Milton, 172 

note 

Macbeth, 164 

Machinery, tyranny of, 160 

Man, spiritual nature of, 194 flF. 

Man versus the State, Spencer's, 219 

Mansel, 134 

Mariolatry, 73 

Mark (Gospel), 85, 87; compared 
with Matt, and Luke, ibid.; 
human traits of Jesus in, 87; 
secrecy of Jesus in, 95-6; story 
of Rich Young Man in, 115 f. 

Marriage, ecclesiastical and civil, 
222 

MateriaHsm, popular, 54; of Old 
Testament, 55, 157, 193 

Matthew (Gospel), 85 ff.; depend- 
ence on Mark, ibid.; apologetic 
motive of, 86; Parables omitted 
from, ibid.; contrast with Luke, 
86-7; cited, 96; problem of 
Sermon on Mount in, 99; dis- 
tortion of a story in, 115 

Mazzini, 221; cited, 239, 241 

Meleager, 189 

"Melting-pot" theory, criticism 
of, 251 ff. 

Memorabilia of Socrates, Xeno- 
phon's, 146 ff. 

Messiah, Jesus interpreted as, 86 

Metaphysics, ix, 56 ff.; 198 ff. 

Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick's, 
cited, 208 note 



272 



INDEX 



Mill, J. S., 58; his Examination of 
Hamilton cited, 135-6. 

Milton, as prose-writer, 171; 
Macaulay on, 172; his mental 
development, 173 f.; his Reason 
of Church Government cited, 
ibid.; controversial works of, 
180 f. 

Mind and body, mystery of, 193 f. 

Miracles, Jesus's repudiation of, 
117 

Moody, W. V., 154 

Moral law, essence of selfhood, 
74; universality of, 241 

Morality, basis of, 152 

MoRLEY, John, cited, 50 

Mormonism, 182 

Myth, Magic and Morals, Cony- 
beare's, 85 note 

Myths, religious, 72; Plato's, 153 



N 



Nations, relation of, to their cit- 
izens, 227 £f., to humanity, 241; 
conditions of survival of, 230 ff. 

Nationality, Religion and, chap, 
viii; spiritual dynamics of, 
220 ff.; psychic elements of, 227; 
more potent than sect or creed, 
229 ff.; danger of misunder- 
standing, 233; force of, for good 
or evil, 234 ff,; Mazzini on, 239 

Natural selection, 52 

Nature, moral indifference of, 
taught by Jesus, 109; ethical 
significance of the doctrine, no 

Navarino, Battle of, 231 



Negroes in America, problem of, 

246-7 
New Freedom, Wilson's, 245 note 
Newman, J. H., 10, 46, 262 
Nietzsche, 152 
Nonconformist churches, English, 

29 f. 
Novum Organum, Bacon's, cited, 

144 

O 

Over-Soul, 179; nation as the, 228 



Parables of Jesus, the, 93 ; Schmidt 
on, ibid.; Jiihcher on, 94; 
"secrecy" of their teaching, 
95 ff.; compared with ^sop's 
fables, 102; two groups of: (i) 
Efficiency Parables, 105 ff.; (2) 
Ethical Parables, in ff. 

Patriotism, good and bad, 233; 
a universal moral principle, 241; 
opposition of jingoism to, ibid.; 
Mr. Tarkington on, 242 note 

Paul, St., his Epistles, 83; his de- 
pendence on Jesus, 84, 145; his 
inspiration, 165 f.; his twofold 
view of resurrection, 213 

Penn, William, 183 

Phaedo, Plato's, 129, 153, 188, 
192, 193, 195 7iote, 203, 204 notCy 
207, 209, 211-12, 215 

Phacdrus, Plato's, 132, 180 

Pharisee and Publican, Parable of, 
112 f. 

Philosophy, 47, 54 ff. 

Pilgrim Fathers, 162 



INDEX 



273 



Plato, 6, 47, 48, 54, 69, 113, 127, 
iSi> 155; Emerson on, 156 note; 
dramatic genius of, 157-8; on 
inspiration, 166 S.; his rational- 
ism, 169, 192, 209; on eternal 
punishment, 214 

Poetry and myth, function of, 154 

Politics, Aristotle's, 180 

Positivism, maxims of, x; and 
immortality, 190, 191 

"Power not ourselves," 74, 175 

Priests and kings, historic relation 
of, 226 

Prodigal Son, Parable of, 11 1 f. 

Progress, evolution and, 51 

Prophetic idea of God, the, 72 

Prophet of Nazareth, Schmidt's, 
cited, 19 note, 79, 93-4 

Prophets, their inspiration, 162 ff. 

"Protestant Episcopal" Church, 
II 

Protestantism, original self-con- 
tradiction in, 44 f.; attitude of, 
towards authority and reason, 
45; development of, 46; a defect 
of, 73; and salvation, 125; its 
doctrine of Biblical inspiration, 
162 ff. 

Punishment, purposes of, 153 

Purgatorian doctrine, the Roman 
CathoUc, 125 

Purgatorian doctrine, the Pla- 
tonic, 213 ff. 

Puritanism, inspiration of, 162 



Quakerism, 170, 183 
Quakers, AustraUan, 224 



Raleigh, Sir W., 77 

Reality, distinguished from exist- 
ence, 55; volitional category, 57, 
59; rehgious craving for, 60; 
transcendent order of, 201 

Reason of Church Goverufnent, 
Milton's, cited, 173 f. 

Rcligio Medici, Browne's, cited, 
196-7 

Religion, sociological function of, 
xi; definition of, 69; and na- 
tionahty, chap, viii; individual- 
istic conception of, 218; connec- 
tion of, with the State, 220; good 
and bad reUgions, 233 

Religious needs, distinguished 
from doctrines, xi f.; nature of, 

60; how satisfied, 61 f.; 

task, estabUshment of right 
relations, 66; practices 



and their results, 70 f.; 

functions of modem "secular" 

States, 221 ff.; truth, 

possibiHty of attaining, 265 

Republic, Plato's, 133 and note; 
142; 151 and notes; 168 f. 

Resurrection of Jesus, the stories 
of, 89 ff. 

Revelation, divine, meaning of, 
155; in each national hterature, 
156; the American, 248 ff. 

Book of, 165 

Ritual, use and abuse of, 36 f . 

Roman Church, 10 f.; its con- 
troversy with Protestantism, 45 ; 
its appeal to private judgment, 
ibid.; and nationahsm, 229 



274 



INDEX 



Roosevelt, Theodore, 237-8 
Rousseau, 219 

RUSKIN, 140 

Russell, Bertrand, cited, 51 
Russia, abolition of serfdom in, 
246 f. 



Sacraments, magical and social 

functions of, 23 f . 
Salvation, nature and conditions 

of, 1 24 f . 
Saviours, 124 f. 
Schmidt, Nathaniel, 19 note, 79; 

cited, 93-4 
Schmiedel, Paul, on the Gospels, 

79 

Schoonmaker, E. D., 2 

Schweitzer, Albert, 98 note 

Seaman, Sir Owen, 160 f. 

Seeley, Sir J., cited, xiii; his Ecce 
Homo, 78; on nationality, 228, 
232, 258 

Self-depreciation, in all ages, 160 

Self -Reliance, Emerson's, cited, 175 

Sermon on the Mount: to whom 
addressed? 99 f.; not a "ser- 
mon," 100; its non-resistance 
doctrine, loi 

Shakespeare, cited, 104 and 
note; 155, 171 

Shelley, 201 

SiDGWiCK, cited, 145, 208 note 

SiMMiAS, 202, 209 f . 

Smith, Joseph, 182 

SociaHsm, spread of, due to Euro- 
pean War, 234; fallacy in Marx's 
theory of, 235 



Socialists, the German, 235 

Society of Friends, 183 

Socrates, xiii, 20, 54, 69; "Res- 
urrection" of, chap, v; "method 
and secret" of, 126, 138-9, 
146 fiF.; comparison with Jesus, 
126, 130; influence on contem- 
poraries, ibid.; parentage of, 
ibid.; as soldier — his hardihood, 
128 and note; personal ughness 
of, ibid.; Plato's and Xenophon's 
pictures of, 130; Delphic oracle 
on, 131; difference of, from the 
Sophists, ibid.; "atheism" of, 
132 f.; his theory of the Good, 
139 &.; on education of rulers, 
142, 151; weakness of his ethical 
doctrine, 145-6; his conversa- 
tion with Euthydemus, 146-9; 
his personahty, as depicted by 
Plato, 158-9; his account of 
inspiration, 167 f., 180; story of 
his death, 188 ff.; on pre- 
existence of the soul, 203; on 
mutual generation of opposites, 
ibid.; on self-denial, 206; on 
nature of soul, 210; grandeur of 
his spirit, 216 

" Son of man," 19 note. 

Sophists, Socrates and the, 130 f . , 
150 

Soul, nature of the, 210 

Space and Time, 56 

Spencer, Herbert, cited, 65, 219 

Spiritual unification, obstacles to, 
261-2; possibihty and promise 
of, 265-6 

State, the Platonic, 143, 151 

Stewart, J. A., 153 itote, 154 



INDEX 



275 



Strayer, Rev. P. M., 28; cited, 

31 note 
Symbols, religious, 72 fif. 
Symposium, Plato's, cited, 128 

notes, 129, 158, 167, 168 
Synoptics: see Gospels, and wider 

titles 



Talents, Parable of the, 107 f. 

Tarkington, B., 39, 242 note 

Tartarus, 214-15 

Tatian, 81 

Technique and genius, 170 

Teleology, evolution and, 51 

Tennyson, 70, 118 

Tertullian, 214 

Theology, compared with astrol- 
ogy and science, xii f . ; the So- 
cratic, 133 fif. 

Time, nature of, 199 f. 

Toleration, limits of, in modem 
nations, 224 f.; an unsatisfac- 
tory compromise, 265 

Transubstantiation, 23 

Trinity, basis of doctrine of, 179 

Tyrell, George, 10; his Chris- 
tianity at the Cross-Roads cited, 
60; criticism of, 61 f. 



U 



Ulfilas, 7 

Underworld, Platonic myth of the, 
213 ff. 



Unitarianism, Emerson's, 179 
Utilitarianism, intuitional basis of, 
208 and note 



Variation, "spontaneous," 52 
Verification in religion, xii 
Vineyard, Parable of Labourers in, 

112 
Virgin Birth, 25 

W 

Watson, William, cited, 195 
Westminster Confession, 209 
Will, the General, 74, 178 
Wilson, President, 245 note 
Women's equaUty with men, 

Plato on, 151 and note 
''Wrestings of Scripture," 116 



Xenophon, 127, 128 note; cited, 
129, 146 flF. 



Yahwe, 227 note 



Zangwill, I., cited, 55, 251 



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